Tin Can in an Earthquake
by OceanTiger13
Summary: In the months following the Khan madness, the crew is at first scattered to the winds, recuperating, finding themselves, sticking close to family. As they reunite in San Francisco, something on the far side of the quadrant drifts into Federation space, catching Starfleet's attention and disrupting hard-won plans to rebuild and recover. Moving forward will have to wait.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N** : The bulk of this story is prewritten, so I'll be posting a chapter a week from here on out, as well as cross-posting on Ao3 (username: OceanTiger23). Any chapters with content potentially-higher-than-T-rated will have a note at the top, and more detailed info in a note at the end of the chapter, at the risk of spoilers.

Disclaimer: All of my Ferengi acquaintances unfriended me after they found out I don't do this for money. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy disappointing them!

* * *

Prologue

[Stardate 2259.187, 1803 FST]

[Recorded subspace exchange between Research Vessel _Eratosthenes_ , UFP Academy of Sciences, and UFP Starbase 14]

Starbase 14, this is UFP Academy of Sciences research vessel _Eratosthenes_ , do you read us? We are currently located at [redacted], approximately [redacted] from you. Are you receiving us? Starbase 14?

[SB14]: Copy _Eratosthenes_ , we read you.

Well thank fucking god for that! We've been trying to make contact for almost 48 hours!

[SB14]: Sir—

What the hell do you yahoos do all day?

[SB14]: Sir!

You're supposed to be the only authority for 300,000 kilometers—

[SB14]: Are you attempting to report an emergency? We have no record of your ship sending out a distress signal—

Because we aren't in distress!

[SB14]: Sir! ... What is the nature of your message?

We've run across what we think might be a refugee ship.

[SB14]: From what location?

Far side of the Neutral Zone.

[SB14]: What leads you to believe that?

Well, it's no bird of prey, that's for damn sure. And the passengers don't look anything like soldiers.

[SB14]: You've seen the inside of the ship?

They hailed us. Look, we really need some help out here. We're not diplomats; we're a bunch of stellar cartographers, and our universal translator system isn't worth shit. We're worried they might be…I don't know. They looked pretty beat up. We sent our resident MD over to try and help out.

[SB14]: Sir—

Listen, we weren't about to just leave them there, and when we tried to get a message through to _you_ , we got a goddamn busy signal! Aren't there supposed to be starships patrolling this sector?

[SB14]: Is any member of your crew or anyone on the other ship in immediate distress?

No. The other guys all seem pretty dehydrated—that's what our doc told us—but otherwise they seem ok.

[SB14]: All right. I'm going to relay this to my superiors and we're going to have someone get back to you within the hour. If the situation changes at any time, contact us again on the following channel. I'm transmitting to you now. …Got all that?

Yeah. Copy. Ok, we'll expect your transmission. _Eratosthenes_ out.

[End transmission]

* * *

 _Translated from Klingon_ :

[Stardate 2259.181, 0730 FST]

[Encrypted subspace exchange between Qo'noS, the Capitol, Klingon Defense Force Headquarters and Imperial Klingon Starship _Muqtovor_ ]

IKS _Muqtovor_ : you are hereby ordered to locate and capture the rogue bird of prey IKS _SaQuy_ , charged with treason against the Empire. General crew to be brought to Rura Penthe dilithium mines for immediate detention. Deadly force authorized. Senior command officers to be brought to Qo'noS. Capture alive.

[IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Understood. _Once more unto the breach, dear friends._

[Encrypted subspace exchange between _Unknown Location_ , Qo'noS and _Unknown Signal_ ]

...

[Stardate 2259.181, 0754 FST]

You have to leave, now. They've just called for your arrest. Noluy and QuSurgh have been taken.

[Unknown Signal]: Tlreth has your cargo.

Good. Good.

[Unknown Signal]: You will be remembered with honor.

 _Ha!_ How kind of you. Comfort an old man in his last hours.

[Unknown Signal]: I will remember you.

…Time runs short. Go.

...

[Encrypted subspace transmission from _Unknown Signal_ to Imperial Freighter _Sovjang_ ]

[Stardate 2259.181, 0755 FST]

It's time.

[End transmission]

* * *

Chapter 1

San Francisco, CA, Earth

Stardate 2259.215

 _you're not gonna make it, you're not gonna make it, you're not gonna make it…_

His fingers were tapping against the strap of his backpack, his heart pounding as he hurried down the dark path, scanning the houses for street numbers. He needed number sixty-three. Supposedly it was located at the dead-end of the road, but he was already in the low eighties, and there was no end in sight. His stomach churned painfully. All was quiet but for his footsteps, his over-controlled breathing, and the scrape of suitcase wheels on concrete behind him.

He stopped short as a wave of nausea swept through him, and pressed a hand over his mouth. It passed and he started moving again, trying to ignore the fact that he'd broken into a cold sweat.

Somewhere beyond the residual fear, the fluttering in his stomach, and the shakiness in his limbs, he was pissed. Beyond pissed. He had been _ready—_ to step onto the transport pad, to put his faith in clunky civilian-operated machinery, to ignore the burning, needle-sharp terror that he'd come out the other side missing a limb or an eye, or just plain missing—and what had happened? The damn thing had broken down _,_ and he'd been herded into an ancient transit shuttle, bouncing from Atlanta to New York to Chicago to Los Angeles to San Francisco—and all the little stops in-between—for _three hours._ His stomach lurched again at the thought and he picked up his pace. He'd be damned if he was gonna let this happen on the sidewalk.

 _sixty-three, sixty-three, you're not gonna…_

The road curved to the left, and suddenly a high, untamed wall of eucalyptus and ivy was looming ahead of him, defining the edge of the park and the street. Relief welled in his chest. He hurried to the last house on the block. It was similar to the others, with dark wood paneling, overflowing plant beds, and a tiny hovercar garage. But sure enough, courtesy of a far-off streetlamp, he could see the glint of a debossed number sixty-three on the doorjamb.

 _Holy shit, you're gonna make it._

He dragged his suitcase up the short, concrete front walk and up a step, stopping on the bristly welcome mat to ring the doorbell. From inside he could hear voices and faint laughter, then the scraping of chair legs on hardwood. He'd been rehearsing what he'd say to side-step the pleasantries, and the line ran through his mind again as footsteps drew near from within: _hi Jim, sorry I'm late, can I use your bathroom?_

The door swung open and he flinched as light flooded the porch. From somewhere in the back of the room he was blasted by a duet of "AAAAAY!" A lean silhouette filled the doorway, threw open its arms and laughed: "Behold, the prodigal son!"

 _you made it you made it you made it_

He opened his dry mouth: "Hi Jim—"

 _Nope._

Leonard McCoy turned to his left, doubled over, and vomited into the azaleas.

* * *

Jim Kirk let his hands drop and stepped out into the chilly night. As his socks started to absorb dew from the damp porch, he reflected that he probably should have seen this coming. Earlier in the evening, somewhere between chopping mushrooms and putting drinks on ice, he'd gotten a string increasingly panicked, pissed-off texts:

 _ **Bones**_ _: problem with transporter. tech difficulties_

 _B_ _ **ones**_ _: small delay, 10 min_

 _ **Bones**_ _: taking longer than expected_

 _ **Bones**_ _: shit_

 _ **Bones**_ _: it's broken_

 _ **Bones**_ _: oh fucking hell they're gonna put us on a shuttle_

 _ **Bones**_ _: it MAKES STOPS?!_

 _ **Bones**_ _: SF IS THE LAST STOP_

 _ **Bones**_ _: im gonna be late, 3 or 4 hours_

 _ **Bones**_ _: sweet jesus these things are the opposite of safe, its not even Starfleet operated_

At that point, he'd taken pity and texted back—

 _ **Jim**_ _: Bones you're gonna be fine. I'll save you a plate_

—and received a prompt reply:

 _ **Bones**_ _: the hell I am. take you up on it if i survive_

Bones was now leaning over the splintered banister, heaving the contents of his stomach into the plants. That was thoughtful of him—at least Jim didn't have to break out a mop. He clapped a hand onto Bones's shoulder. "That bad, huh?"

The doctor moaned. "Almost made it."

"Hey, A for effort."

" _Kirk?_ "

Jim leaned back into the doorway. From the dining room table, Uhura, Spock, and Scotty were looking on in concern. Uhura was turned around in her seat. "Everything ok?" she asked.

"Yeah, it will be."

"I have anti-nausea pills if ye like!" Scotty called.

Bones retched again before answering. "No—m'fine, thanks…"

Spock then added his two cents: "Doctor, it is hardly logical for you of all people to refuse medication that could improve your current situation."

Jim stifled a laugh. Between ragged breaths, Bones muttered something that sounded vaguely like "pointy-eared hobgoblin."

"I think he's fine, Spock." Jim turned back to the porch, where Bones seemed to be done throwing up. "I thought you did ok with shuttles now."

"Not this one. Damn thing rattled like a tin can in an earthquake. There was something seriously wrong with the inertial dampeners."

"Uh-huh," Jim said dryly. "Should I break out the ginger ale and fuzzy blankets?"

"Ass. Just point me to the bathroom." Bones drew himself up, the derisive edge of his reply tempered by exhaustion. He was tall when he stood up straight, but now he was slouching, his eyes vaguely haunted: defeated by public transit.

Jim grinned and pulled him into a hug. "It's good to see you."

"You too."

"How was Atlanta?"

"Some from column A, some from column B," Bones said darkly.

Jim winced. "Lemme get you a drink."

* * *

Bones disappeared down the hall with a short wave to Spock, Scotty, and Uhura, and Jim retrieved a bottle of Kentucky bourbon from a high cupboard in the kitchen. It would've been nice if he could say he'd been holding onto it for awhile now, for the occasion of their humble reunion, but he'd be lying. He'd run down to the bodega on the corner earlier that day to pick it up.

"Who's in?" he asked, holding the bottle out to the table.

While Spock declined politely and Uhura held up two fingers, pinched an inch or two apart, Scotty returned an enthusiastic yes.

"As I was saying," the engineer said, "we get to the hotel, and it's not like any of the three of us has ever been particularly fussy about accommodations. But after about ten minutes, my brother Greg comes stormin' out of his room, just hysterical, yellin' about _feckin' moon bugs, there are feckin' moon bugs all over the damn sheets, we're not stayin' here, we are leaving_ right now!"

Jim snorted, and Spock arched an eyebrow at him. "You'll see," he said, pouring out a couple of fingers of bourbon and passing the glass to Uhura.

After a solid month (or so he claimed) of cajoling from his siblings, Scotty had agreed to a brief hiatus from supervising the _Enterprise_ refit, which had left him jumping between San Francisco and spacedock since early March. He'd returned from Earth's moon about a week ago, moaning about needing a vacation from his vacation. Between catching up over breakfast at a Marin County diner and the bar crawl they'd done through the North Beach, Jim had heard this story at least three times, at varying levels of sobriety.

"Well, out of the supply room comes this poor young Andorian lady, who's clearly quite new on the job," Scotty continued, animated, more to Uhura and Spock than to Jim. "And she comes over and says somethin' like, _is there something wrong with your room, sir?_ And oh, god, Greg just goes _ballistic_ , not just about the hotel room, mind, but about his job, his boss, his ex, his bloody medical problems…"

As he poured out a glass for the engineer, Jim's thoughts trailed away from the "Moon Motel Incident" and inevitably toward the following afternoon. He had a briefing at 1400 with Admiral Barnett about the _Enterprise's_ next mission, slated for after the refit completion and rechristening in January. Their first assignment was likely to be nothing special, although part of him was still holding out hope for a five-year-mission. He'd renewed his request in April, but when he'd asked about it a month ago, the admiral had returned a chuckle.

"You were just dead, Kirk. Give yourself a few months to get back into it."

It was the kind of comment he might have chafed under, if he hadn't grown to like Barnett over the last two years. That, and he was one of the few at Command who _knew_ , and wasn't treating Jim like he needed to be handled. It was after a month of far more tentative remarks from well-meaning doctors at Starfleet Medical that he'd skipped town on a rented motorcycle with no real planned return date. He'd forewarned only two people. Bones, of course, had scolded him, but it had been Spock who'd convinced him to go back. Jim remembered receiving the comm message, at a quiet bar in Yosemite. Three lines, nothing more:

[Stardate 2259.90, 2101 FST. Message from **Spock** , _New Vulcan_ ]

 _Jim, I suspect you have left San Francisco out of anger, for which I do not believe you can be blamed. I need not explain the necessity of your return. However, know that your frustrations will have an end date once you allow them to._

He'd been right, of course. Pointy-eared bastard. Jim hadn't returned to San Francisco immediately, but he had returned, and three months later he'd completed the evaluations for his return to active duty. The physical exam, he'd passed with flying colors. The psych exam…well, he'd passed. That was the important thing.

"…and then Katharine, my sister, comes out of her room in a bloody _towel_ …" Scotty's voice brought Jim back to the table. They were nearing the punchline.

"Anyways, after about fifteen minutes of this," Scotty gestured incomprehensibly, "I decide to go have a look around myself, because there's nothin' wrong with _my_ room. So I go in, and sure enough, all over the sheets there are these little specks. But they're not movin' or anything. So I get closer and I take a whiff."

"And what happened?" Uhura asked.

Scotty leaned forward. "It's _lavender_."

Jim laughed silently into his glass as Uhura clapped a hand to her mouth.

" _No_ ," she said.

"Yeah. And later we found out that they only do that if it's your first time on the moon, comin' from Earth. It's like shavin' your head when ye cross the equator. Or somethin'."

"Did you stay?" Uhura asked.

"Oh, we stayed," Scotty confirmed. "And that young lady got a _very_ large tip."

Uhura broke into laughter, throwing her head back. "Scotty, your brother—"

"Oh, he's a disaster." Scotty nodded. "Off-planet fellowship and unity? Forget it. He's walking around with his foot in his mouth. Silly git." He paused for a sip of bourbon and glanced up at Jim. "That is _good_. Did you splurge on this?"

Jim shrugged. "No more than usual."

"You've gotta let me pitch in. A little." Scotty spread his hands. "Please? I'm drinkin' my fair share."

Spock gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head. "Mr. Scott, the intricacies of your stories remain, to my ear, quite abstract."

Scotty, in the middle of another sip of bourbon, scoffed good-naturedly and waved him off. "Lassie, I thought you also made it off-planet," he said to Uhura. " _Agh_ —" he paused as his fork clattered to the floor, and leaned over to pick it up. As a result, he missed the tiny, split-second glance that flicked between Spock and Uhura—one which was not lost on Jim. In the last six months, aside from the Yosemite incident, he'd spoken to Spock only once, enough to learn that Uhura had been on New Vulcan for barely a week before heading back to Earth alone.

"Are you guys OK?" Jim had asked, hesitantly.

"Lieutenant Uhura and I have long had different plans for our time away from the _Enterprise_ ," Spock had replied. "As we will see each other again in mere months, separating during this period to accomplish our respective goals is logical."

It was a non-answer, and Jim had forced himself not to pry.

After a moment's pause, Uhura answered Scotty, wearing a strained smile. "Not really."

And now Jim could see Spock shift, just ever so slightly.

"I thought you were puddle-jumping all over the place," Scotty said, oblivious to Uhura's discomfort. "London, Shanghai—you were bloody everywhere."

Uhura took in a deep breath through her nose, which was all Jim needed to know the situation needed salvaging. "Preparing for the semester, right?" he asked, leaning back in his chair. " _Professor Uhura_."

Despite herself, a smile tugged at Uhura's mouth. "Visiting lecturer," she corrected him.

Jim shrugged. "You still get to grade papers and terrify xenolinguistics freshmen for four whole months."

"Inspiring fear in the incoming student body is hardly the point." Spock sent Jim the ghost of a frown.

Jim shot him a look. _What gives?_ Spock was never this obtuse unless he was doing it intentionally.

"He's kidding, Spock," Uhura said, then added to Jim, "Although he is right. The point is I have to eat for the next five months." She turned to Scotty, recovering some of her natural ease. "Actually, Janice Rand and I had made plans to go camping on Parsis V, but something came up. There was some vague FCDC warning about a Bynerian fly fever outbreak. We ended up hanging around London instead."

"You know, I heard about that outbreak," Scotty said, thoughtfully. "I heard it was somethin' else. Bigger, maybe."

Uhura tilted her head. "Like what?"

"Well, Katharine did the whole Federation traveler safety registration thing when we were on the moon. She kept gettin' updates about somethin' dodgy in that part of the quadrant. Not fly fever. Some new, superfast kind of flu or something," Scotty said, sending them all a conspiratorial look over the rim of his glass.

Jim exchanged a skeptical glance with Uhura. "Where were you hearing this?" he asked.

Scotty waved a vague hand. "Here and there. I've got an old friend, runs seed stores back and forth to some of the border planets. Seemed concerned."

Uhura cast him a wry smile. "Not to doubt your friend, Monty, but that sounds a little sketchy to me."

"I'm just tellin' ye what I've heard, lassie."

"I would think that if there was some kind of…large-scale outer rim disease outbreak we'd know about it, don't you?"

"Not necessarily," said Spock.

Jim, Uhura and Scotty turned to look at him.

He arched an eyebrow at them. "For all the benefits of long-range sensor technology, it is not always easy to find reliable information in transmissions intercepted from the outer rim, particularly from undeveloped colonial settlements or non-Federation worlds. It is, as a result, conceivable that news of such an event might have escaped our knowledge."

Jim resisted the urge to play devil's advocate. Privately he agreed with Spock. Months spent hiding in the woods at age thirteen, eating tree bark and trying not to get killed, had taught him to know better than to assume the cavalry was coming. But Spock's comment was clearly directed at Uhura, and Jim had no interest in helping him pick a fight, if that was what was happening.

Uhura was the first to respond. "Fair enough, but disease outbreaks happen all the time," she said. She cast a glance at Scotty. "They don't necessarily have universe-ending ramifications."

"That is not to say they have no ramifications. If you will recall, in the early 2230s Earth experienced a resurgence of Avian Flu," Spock replied, "which did claim lives."

"And was promptly addressed by Federation medical researchers," Uhura told him.

"I remember that," Scotty interrupted, darkly. "I _had_ it."

"But obviously you were treated," Uhura said.

"Oh aye, right away. But the entire family was stuck in the house for a week. Nearly killed Greg and Katharine out of boredom," Scotty said.

There was a brief pause.

"Whatever the seriousness," Spock said, finally, "the point is moot. The statistical likelihood that such an event would ever reach Federation space is…low."

"Well, there's a first."

Jim turned with a grin as a familiar tired drawl cut through the tension.

Bones looked ready to pass out, but he managed a small smirk. "I don't think I've ever heard you use that sentence without tacking a number on the end of it."

* * *

Leaning on the back of Uhura's chair, McCoy felt somewhat less like death warmed over. Standing at the table gave him a palpable sense of relief, removing the residual stress from the shuttle ride and replacing it with exhaustion. He stepped back as Uhura got up and gave him a hug. "Glad you got here in one piece," she chuckled.

"More or less."

Spock inclined his head. "Doctor."

"Spock." McCoy returned a nod and took the empty seat next to Scotty. Jim passed him a plate.

"Have a drink, laddie," Scotty said, placing a glass in front of him, "Jim got the good stuff, and he's refusing to let us chip in."

"Is he now?"

Jim glanced at him. "I may have picked up your favorite."

"Well, then by all means."

"How was Atlanta?" Uhura asked.

"Less disastrous than usual."

Technically this wasn't true. He'd spent the last few months working at a xenobiology clinic in Washington DC: a way to pay the bills during the refit, and a way to be close to Joanna while he was still Earthside. He'd ended the summer with two weeks in Atlanta, before Command needed him back at Starfleet Medical. Parts of the visit had been encouraging, but a lot of it had been, well…a shitshow. Coordinating with Jocelyn after the divorce had always been a nightmare, but it was running into Clay, her new…whatever the hell she was calling him, at the grocery store that had really been the highlight.

McCoy took a bite of broccoli before he could be expected to provide more of an answer. He ignored the look Jim shot him across the table. "What about all of you?" he asked. "Not all taking ill-advised solo trips to Half Dome, I hope?"

Jim rolled his eyes, and McCoy ignored that too. The kid was the proverbial patient from hell. He'd up and taken off about a month after the Khan madness, crying cabin fever and the uselessness of mandated therapy. By then in DC, having turned over Jim's recovery treatment to the attending physician at Starfleet General, McCoy had received a short, frustrated message on his PADD by way of a confession:

[Stardate 2259.89, 1400 EST. Message from **Jim** , _San Francisco, CA, Earth_ ]

 _So, I was just told I should think about taking up Vulcan meditation. Fuck this. I'm going to Glen Aulin._

McCoy had sent a reply he knew to be mostly bluster— _Dammit Jim, you can't just skip out on treatment and you're in no shape to be climbing mountains right now!—_ to which he had never received an answer. Jim had eventually resurfaced, fortunately without incident, and McCoy had made a point of berating him for it.

"Nothin' quite so short-notice," Scotty laughed. "Although this one made her way around half the planet before circling back to us." He gestured at Uhura.

"Half the planet, huh?"

Uhura grinned. "I saw a production of your favorite play."

"Oh, _wonderful_."

In the same xenosociology section as first-semester cadets, he and Uhura had been handed a particularly thorny group assignment: presenting on an adaptation of Shakespeare from a non-Terran perspective. _Macbeth_ in Romulan had plagued him for weeks. He took a sip of bourbon. "And you, Spock? Shakespeare must have some obscure shred of logic to be appreciated somewhere."

The Vulcan steepled his fingers. "A query I cannot properly answer, as I did not view the performance in question. I spent the bulk of my time away from the _Enterprise_ at the colony on New Vulcan."

"Oh. I thought—" McCoy broke off; Uhura had abruptly busied herself with refilling her drink. He turned back to Spock. "Um. And how was that?"

"The colony's infrastructure development has progressed quickly since my last visit to the planet, but there remain significant challenges. Our healers have had particular difficulty in addressing the mental recovery of the inhabitants."

 _Nice, Len. Tactful._

McCoy suppressed a grimace. In the last two years, he had begun to recognize the subtleties of Spock's expressions, and there was something just slightly off about the Vulcan's face now. Something a little too guarded. "I'm sure they're using…everything they have at their disposal," he finished, lamely.

"Irrefutably," Spock replied.

McCoy took another sip of his drink, and felt the silence settle heavily on the small table. Across from him, Jim looked like he was searching for something to say, but it was ultimately Scotty who pulled the conversation back from the brink.

"So, I know we've all been scattered to the winds these last few months, but has anyone else heard the news about Sulu?"

McCoy glanced over. "What about him?"

"He and Ben adopted a baby."

Uhura's head snapped up. "They _what_? When did this happen?"

"'Bout two weeks ago."

Jim looked sidelong at the engineer. "You're full of it."

Scotty was wearing a smug smile as he pulled out his PADD and scrolled to a picture of the lieutenant and his husband. Sulu was cradling a small bundle in his arms: a tiny child, barely a newborn, by the look of it.

"Evidently not," Spock remarked, and McCoy was relieved to see the caginess in his eyes had disappeared.

"That son of a bitch." Jim made an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. He pushed out his chair. "Yeah. Ok. We're calling him. What time is it on Mars?" He was already halfway down the hall. "You know what? I don't care. We're calling him."

* * *

As it turned out, it was four a.m. at the Mars settlement where Sulu's husband worked, and Sulu didn't pick up. They left a video message, replete with congratulations and expletives, then made another dent in the bourbon pressing Scotty for details. At eleven, Uhura noted with a yawn that she was fifteen hours ahead, and that if she was going to be a functional human anytime soon, she had better start readjusting now. She thanked Jim for dinner and left, taking Spock with her. The evening wound down quickly after that.

Scotty, who had taken the liberty of refilling their glasses, listed off a string of predictions about their next mission that ran the gamut from ongoing diplomatic problems in the Laurentian System to a shortage of sandwich bread in the commissary. ("There's no peanut butter to be found beyond the Alpha Quadrant, gentlemen, and if that's not a daunting prospect, I don't know what is.") As he talked, Jim stacked plates and utensils, fielding another of the engineer's not-quite-joking requests to put a panini press in the ship's mess, giving Bones space to finish his food in peace.

A quiet half-hour passed, and Scotty yawned and glanced at his watch. "All right, gents. Now that I've got to be back in spacedock in seven hours, I think I'll go try and get a little sleep." He stood and stretched, clapping Bones's shoulder. "Nighty night."

"Night Scotty," Jim said, and Bones gave him a two-fingered salute off the side of his glass.

When the engineer had shuffled off upstairs Jim turned and asked, "So, what did happen in Atlanta?"

"Same as usual. Joce didn't want to let me within a mile of Jo."

"Yeah, but you've bitched to me about 'same as usual' before, and you don't get half as maudlin as this."

Bones shrugged. When Jim waited, he relented. "She's seeing someone. Joce is, I mean."

Jim frowned. For all the grief it caused him where his daughter was concerned, Bones had never expressed regret for getting divorced in the first place. "She's dated before now, hasn't she?"

"It seemed more serious than the others. He'd met Jo."

 _Ah_.

Bones glanced at him. "It's not a big deal, Jim."

Jim doubted it, but he knew when Bones was trying to get him to drop something. "You did get to see her, right? Jo?"

Bones's expression softened. He pulled out his PADD and turned the screen to Jim, revealing a picture of a smiling little girl, with knobby, grass-stained knees, dimples, and hazel eyes like her father's.

"Holy shit," Jim said. The last time he'd seen Joanna in person, she'd been wearing footy pajamas and sucking on a pacifier. "Bones, she grew up."

"Yeah, they do that," Bones said, dryly. "Despite one's best efforts."

"I'll bet." There was something about his expression, Jim realized. His mouth was twisted up in a smirk, but in his eyes was a genuine smile. "OK, c'mon. What is it?"

"What's what?"

"You obviously know something I don't."

Bones set down his glass. "Tell me something. How much crazy do you have planned in the next month?"

"No more than usual. Why?"

"In a few days here, I'm gonna be playing tour guide for a very important person, and I'd like to make sure San Francisco doesn't go up in flames before I get the chance."

Jim blinked. "She's coming here?"

"For two weeks," Bones nodded. "Figured she should probably know at least a little about what I do, and why I'm not around for months at a time."

 _Or years_ , Jim added silently. Outwardly he laughed in disbelief. "How the hell did you swing that?"

Bones took a sip of bourbon. "Very carefully."

"Well, obviously, I plan to be a terrible influence. Criminal, potentially. Hope that's OK."

"Jim."

"I mean, clearly this is a prime opportunity to go wreak havoc in the Tenderloin."

" _Jim_."

"You think it'd piss off Komack if I showed her all the top-secret war room stuff?"

"Kid, you may be my captain, but I'm not above punching your lights out."

Jim grinned. "I'll take that risk. Just as long as I still get to be the fun uncle."

Bones rolled his eyes. They lapsed into silence as Jim finished off his drink, watching as Bones stifled a yawn behind his hand. "Time to turn in?" he asked.

Bones nodded. The shuttle really hadn't done him any favors.

"Unfortunately for you," Jim said, "Scotty claimed the spare room. However, I have an exceedingly comfortable couch."

Bones raised his glass. "I'll take it."

Rising, Jim took Bones's empty plate and headed into the kitchen. "All right. Tell me if you need anything. Wake-up call and wind-sprints at 0600."

"Har har."

* * *

Exceedingly comfortable, McCoy found, was a stretch, but ultimately it didn't matter. The nausea may have subsided, but he was jetlagged and restless.

Jim had left him a sleeping bag, so he curled up in it and stared through the glass balcony doors at the mess of fog and orange street lights down the hill. It amazed him that Jim could afford to hang onto this place. As far as he knew, he was timesharing it with another captain who was on long-term assignment in the Beta Quadrant.

It struck McCoy that since enlisting, he had strayed into the realm of functional homelessness, dividing his time between Atlanta, San Francisco, and the _Enterprise_. In Atlanta, depending on the length of visit—he really did only visit now—he stayed with friends or subletted. In San Francisco, he stayed in Starfleet's officer quarters, temporary accommodations that were only marginally less cramped and soulless than the Academy dorms. And while the _Enterprise_ was getting more familiar, it was hard to get comfortable anywhere you were only stationed a couple months at a time.

He was too old for this. This was what people did in their early 20s, not ten years on, when they'd acquired an advanced degree, a failed marriage, and a kid.

Still, thinking of Joanna brought a smile to his face. He'd been more than a little surprised when he'd received the message greenlighting her visit:

[Stardate 2259.199, 2052 EST. Message from **Jocelyn Darnell** , Atlanta, GA, Earth]

 _That all seems fine to me, Leonard. Let me know when you nail down the dates, and make sure you give her a couple days of recovery after she gets back from summer camp. This sounds like the best opportunity for her to get to know you, given the circumstances._

She might as well have added "don't fuck it up," at the end, but Jocelyn's style tended more towards the passive aggressive than the direct. And as much as McCoy hated to admit it, he wasn't entirely sure he _wasn't_ going to fuck it up.

He didn't want to bore Jojo with Starfleet stuff, but he hadn't exactly played tourist in the city during his time as a cadet. San Francisco was full of extended walks up steep hills when he'd needed to clear his head, and shitty dive bars where he'd had to drag Jim out of fights. Not exactly wholesome fare.

There was always the Discovery Museum. Cliché, true, but she was _five._ That was ok, wasn't it? And he knew she'd love the Presidio. The first time they'd talked when he'd visited Atlanta in March, she'd spent twenty straight minutes telling him about how she wanted to become a National Park Ranger. How much time did the average kindergartener spend on career plans before moving onto the next thing?

McCoy rolled over and faced the ceiling.

It hadn't come up over dinner, at least not since he'd arrived, but he knew Jim was angling for a five-year-mission. He'd been talking about it since he'd gotten the _Enterprise_ in the first place, and in April, McCoy knew, he'd resubmitted his bid for candidacy. If that was, in fact, the point of Jim's briefing with Barnett the next day, McCoy would have a lot more on his plate to worry about.

Five years in deep space meant five years without solid ground under his feet. Five years of violent away missions and mechanical disasters waiting to happen. Of treating new diseases with unknown and catastrophic potential. Five years of recording video messages for Joanna, because once you got far out enough, there was no such thing as real-time communication with Earth.

Of course, he would go. At the end of the day, he knew he was of more use out there in the black than he'd ever been on Earth. As long as there were people like Jim, boldly going, sticking their necks out to explore strange new worlds and seek out new civilizations, there would have to be people like McCoy there too, making sure they didn't get killed in the process.

He glanced at his watch and winced at the time, then rolled over, willing himself to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

 _UFP Academy of Sciences Terraforming Research Station, Caerus IX_

 _Stardate 2259.178_

 _The planet was small and remote enough that it took the better part of a day to get there via shuttlecraft. Apparently terraforming stations, like far-flung colonial settlements, weren't important enough for warp capability. The thought needled Jim for the entire journey._

 _The shuttle arrived just after sunset, at the tail end of a twenty-hour day. He was handed a pair of goggles before disembarking, and quickly discovered why._

 _Upon stepping onto the dusty ground, he was buffeted from the right by a howling wind. He stumbled into a scientist carrying a large crate, already wearing goggles and a face mask. She shot him a glare and disappeared into a nearby tent, the first of a small village of them, stretching out for a good couple of kilometers._

 _Jim put on the goggles, pulled up his hood, and shouldered his backpack, making his way through the tents. The file on his PADD said he needed to look for Testing Site No. 47. The file did not elaborate on what constituted a testing site—whether it was a tent, a building, or something else._

 _As he scanned the landscape, a tiny figure emerged from one tent and began crossing over to another. He jogged over to it. "Excuse me!" he shouted, "Hey! Excuse me—"_

 _The figure turned, and he found himself looking at the spitting image of Keenser, Scotty's Assistant Chief Engineer. The one who climbed on everything._

 _"Hi, Jim Kirk," he introduced himself._

 _Not-Keenser looked up at him and blinked his (his?) beady black eyes. He didn't respond._

 _"I'm looking for a Winona Kirk," he shouted over the wind, showing him the file on the PADD. "She's an agro specialist." As with Keenser, he had no idea if he was making any sense. Keenser and Scotty seemed to share some kind of strange, made-up language, full of off-color jokes, engineering jargon, and references to Delta Vega. Otherwise Jim wasn't sure he'd heard Keenser breathe a word of Standard. "Do you know her?"_

 _Not-Keenser stared at him, then pointed to a lone tent, about thirty meters from the edge of the camp, lit up from the inside and flapping violently._

 _"OK," Jim said. "Thanks."_

 _He made his way over, shielding his face. The wind had started to pick up sand and dirt. To the north, there was a dark cloud moving south on the horizon, but the sky above was crystal clear and scattered with stars._

 _"Hello?" he shouted._

 _No answer._

 _"Hey, can you let me in?"_

 _He glanced toward the cloud again. It looked closer._

 _"Shit," he muttered, and unzipped the tent flaps._

 _Inside, instead of battered by howling wind and flying sand, he was folded into a blanket of warm, humid air. He blinked, removing his hood and goggles, which had fogged up the moment he'd entered._

 _Water beaded down the crinkly, metallic tent walls. Before him, green, leafy plants nearly a meter high—corn, he realized—stretched out in neat rows of damp soil. Through the rows of plants, he could see a short figure at the other end of the tent: a woman with a graying ponytail, bent over a desk, scribbling something on a datapad._

 _"Hello?" Jim asked again._

 _Without the wind to shout over, his voice came out unexpectedly loud. Startled, the woman whipped around, and Jim found himself confronted, for the first time in years, with his own blue eyes._

 _The woman blinked. "Jim," she said._

 _It took him a moment to remember how to speak. He had forgotten what she looked like. "Hi."_

 _"What are you doing here?"_

 _Winona Kirk's words weren't unkind, and Jim wasn't surprised by them. The last time they'd spoken in person, he had told her in no uncertain terms that he didn't want her in his life. If she'd gotten nothing else right, she had at least honored that demand._

 _Death, of course, had a way of putting things into perspective for you._

" _I came to see you," he answered, and immediately felt ridiculous. Sometimes the truth was pitifully inadequate._

 _Winona stood, gently setting down the stylus. "I heard about Chris Pike," she said._

 _Jim flashed on Pike's bloodied face, and the charred, gaping hole in his uniform._

 _"What, in the tabloids?"_

 _His voice was cold and sarcastic. It was like he was eighteen again, fueled by a familiar current of anger, speaking before he could weigh the consequences of his words. He hadn't expected to round that corner so quickly._

" _No," Winona replied, carefully not matching his tone. "From his brother."_

 _Jim stared at her, uncomprehending._

 _"Chris wrote me about you, Jim. When you enlisted. We kept in contact."_

 _He could feel her eyes on him as he processed this information. Pike—"Chris"—had written her. About him. And he'd continued to write her, up until the day he couldn't. Jim had always known Pike could be a manipulative prick. It had made him a good recruiter—_ I dare you to do better _—but this was another level entirely._

" _I'm sorry about what happened," Winona said._

 _Jim's heart was pounding. The humidity suddenly felt static, oppressive. Finally, he managed to answer. "You and just about everyone," he ground out. He turned to leave._

" _The last shuttle's gone." Winona's response was quiet, but it stopped him in his tracks. "It just dropped you off. Next one leaves tomorrow at 0600."_

 _Jim lingered at the entrance of the tent._

 _From behind, his mother's voice: "Why don't I get you a beer."_

* * *

Jim's eyes snapped open to the sound of his phone buzzing loudly on his bedside table. In the gloom, the blue digits of his alarm clock swam into view: _0537_. He groaned and, with a minimum of movement, lifted it to his ear.

"Yeah," he grumbled into the mouthpiece.

"Kirk, it's Admiral Barnett."

Jim bolted upright. "Sir."

"Apologies for the wake-up call—couldn't get your comm signal."

Jim glanced across the dark room to his desk. His communicator, Starfleet standard issue, sat untouched next to the chronometer, where it had been for the last month. He'd had little use for it off-duty. "Not at all, Admiral. What can I do for you?"

"I hate to do this to you on short notice, but our meeting's been moved up to 0800. Daystrom, 15th floor. Laramie conference room."

Jim felt his heart skip a beat. Months after Khan's attack on the center, there were still moments when he could hear the echo of shattered glass and phaser fire, when he could smell the smoke that had billowed up from Khan's jumpship as it plummeted twenty-seven floors to the square below.

Barnett's voice interrupted his train of thought, and the memory where it inevitably led. "Kirk, you still with me?"

Jim straightened up, running a hand over his eyes. "Yes. That's not a problem."

"Good. I understand a few of your officers have recently made it back to San Francisco, am I correct? First Officer Spock, CMO McCoy, and Chief Engineer Scott?"

"…That's correct. And a little creepy, Sir, if you don't mind my saying." Half-awake, he didn't have much of a filter.

Fortunately, at five a.m. Barnett still seemed to have a sense of humor. "Just keeping you on your toes, Captain," he replied. "Bring them with you."

With the exception of Spock, senior officers almost never accompanied him to planetside mission briefings. If it wasn't exceptionally important, often it was just him.

"Will do." He paused. "Admiral, does this change have anything to do with the request I filed in the spring?"

Barnett was silent on the other end for a moment, before ending the call. "We'll discuss it in person, Kirk. See you shortly."

Jim was very awake now. He leapt out of bed, phone still in hand, and fed an order to the operating system: "Call Spock."

* * *

In the wide, too-soft hotel bed, sleep hadn't come, and eventually Spock had given up trying. It was illogical to miss the faculty apartment he'd occupied before he was tapped for the _Enterprise_. Retaining it would have been impossible, as the Academy had had to fill his position, but he had adapted to it well during his time as an instructor. Even with Nyota's arm draped across his chest, the hotel room was far too cold. He slid out from beneath her and padded quietly to the glass door on the other side of the bed.

The room had a balcony that faced westward. As he stepped outside, he could see in the distance through the fog layer where the lights of the city stopped and the vast, dark expanse of the ocean began. The view—or currently the lack thereof—was an additional expense, one he'd known Nyota would appreciate when he had booked the room. When he'd seen the weather forecast, minutes into their reunion at the interworld transit hub two days ago, he'd felt a glimmer of regret that she wouldn't be able to enjoy it.

It felt as if an eternity had passed since then.

Waiting for her at the civilian shuttle station, he had refused to label himself _nervous_. He had, however, been restless: pacing the long indoor hallway adjacent to the landing pads, weighing incalculable odds that they would leave together. He knew he needed to say something, to address their long, unwanted hiatus. Nothing suitable had come to mind. Words felt inadequate.

As it turned out, Nyota had been in a similar state. Within an hour of leaving the station, the hotel room was booked, and they were occupying it. Only reluctantly did they finally dress and leave, late in the day, Jim's dinner party fast approaching. Nyota had checked the time, then sunk back into the bedclothes with a sigh:

"We should get going."

"Indeed. If we do not leave within the next forty minutes there is an 92% likelihood that we will be late." This delivered drily, a stab at a joke.

After a beat, her brow had knitted thoughtfully. "We could just…"

He'd raised an eyebrow at the unspoken suggestion. It was tempting. It would be a challenge to come up with something to tell Jim, who would know immediately whether he was being truthful. Just as Spock was formulating the beginnings of a plan, however Nyota had shaken her head.

"No, we can't." She was rising from the bed, making her way to the shower. "If we _both_ don't show…"

He had forced himself to quash the wave of disappointment that came over him. But then she had turned back to him, lips quirked upward, sending an unexpected jolt through his stomach. Evidently over the last four months he had forgotten the impact of her smile.

Following their fight on New Vulcan, Spock had cordoned off all thoughts of her, refusing to be distracted from his work. They had spoken only once, when Nyota had commed him without prior warning to demand if he had been responsible for arranging her employment at the Academy for the fall semester.

 _I do_ not _need you to find me a job, and I do_ not _want you intervening in my professional life._

He had answered in measured tones, careful not to upset her further: _I have neither contacted nor spoken with anyone in the xenolinguistics department in over eleven months_.

A technicality. One that left out the possibility of having been contacted by the Academy's first-year dean—a figure in the administration and not the xenolinguistics department—and asked to vouch for Nyota's expertise.

 _She is an unparalleled candidate for the position_ , he had said, without exaggeration.

Vulcans, after all, did not lie.

During the shuttle flight back to Earth, he had tried and failed to find an adequate way to tell her the whole story. Perhaps as an overture of transparency, a commitment to future openness between them. But then their fevered reunion had postponed any such discussion.

A snatch of movement in the hotel room. Spock cast a glance behind him to see Nyota now curled up on her side, her dark hair spilling out across the pillow. He turned back to the fog and city lights.

The first vague snatches of sunrise were catching on the Presidio to the north. Looking back out at the bank of fog, Spock realized that the last time he'd been aboard the _Enterprise_ , it had been falling out of the sky, hurtling toward the very same stretch of ocean. Before the thrusters had reengaged, pushing them back up through the cloud layer. Before he had knelt in front of a containment door in Engineering, watching Jim's hand slip down the glass and his body grow still. Before he'd been on top of a speeding garbage scow, seized by an explosive, uncontrollable rage, intent on dispatching Khan where he lay until Nyota had screamed that they needed him alive.

Spock blinked. There was a strange, repetitive buzzing in his ears. A remnant of the attacks of last February? He was visited sporadically by such ghost sensations. His ears sometimes rang as they had during the shooting at the Daystrom Center. The back of his neck still occasionally seemed to burn as it had on Nibiru, the heat of the volcano pressing through the armor of the exo-suit.

Then the buzzing stopped, and he heard Nyota's voice, sleep-heavy and muffled through the glass door: "Hello?"

Another moment passed before Spock realized it was his comm.

* * *

The other half of the hotel bed was empty but still warm when Nyota Uhura awoke, disoriented, to the sound of buzzing somewhere behind her right ear.

Her comm. Someone was signaling her.

At 0540 hours?

She suppressed a groan and rolled over onto her elbow, snatching the phone off the bedside table and mumbling into it: "Hello?"

She'd always been good at mornings: once she was awake, she was awake. It had served her well at the Academy, and it had gotten her noticed by Spock, who taught at 8 a.m. and couldn't understand why half his students routinely napped through lecture.

What she wasn't good at was being roused by the gleeful tones of her captain after four hours of sleep. Jim Kirk's voice was tinny and unnaturally loud in the quiet room. She held the earpiece away from her head, blinking groggily in the darkness as he babbled at her:

"Spock—before you logic at me about health and optimum sleep cycles and whatnot, I have a very important question for you. You eat bagels, right?"

Uhura pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm not Spock, Captain. Although I'm pretty sure he'd eat a bagel if you offered him one," she replied. "Is there a reason you're comming me at five in the morning?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then: "Uhura?"

The glass door to the balcony slid open and Uhura looked up to see Spock standing at the edge of the bed, staring at her.

 _Kirk_ , she mouthed, blearily.

Spock's dark eyes did not move from her face. No, not her face. The comm in her hand…

Uhura felt her face flush as the pieces tumbled together. She sat up, holding Spock's comm out to him. Her own, she now realized, was sitting untouched on the bedside table, right where she'd left it the night before.

Wordlessly, he accepted it and turned away from the bed. "Captain?"

Uhura sat up and let out a long sigh.

It wasn't that Kirk cared about fraternization. He didn't. It was that after five months of near-radio silence, Uhura wasn't entirely sure where she and Spock stood. The last thing she needed was anyone else, much less her _captain_ , drawing conclusions about that on her behalf.

The last time she and Spock been together in person, they had been in the spartan living quarters on New Vulcan where Spock would spend the rest of the spring and the bulk of the summer, embroiled in the fight that would send Uhura back to Earth barely a week into her stay on the planet, bristling with familiar, one-sided anger.

 _Yes, but_ we _aren't talking, Spock,_ I'm _talking, and you're shutting me out. Again._

As with the volcano on Nibiru, he had resisted—no, refused—talking to her about recapturing Khan, aboard the speeding garbage hovercraft in the middle of San Francisco proper, about watching Kirk die behind the radiation containment door, about his fleeting, but very real transfer to the USS _Bradbury_. To him it, all of that was over. Open and shut.

By morning Uhura was on the next shuttle back to Earth, where she would arrive on her sister's doorstep in Kigali unannounced, holding back tears and carrying nothing but the small duffel she'd packed for her time on New Vulcan, her quarters on the _Enterprise_ now inaccessible.

For the next month, she would shuttle between her sister's flat in Kigali and her parents' house in Nairobi, unsettled by how easily she readjusted to life at home, taking odd translating jobs between watching her infant niece and three-year-old nephew, taking tea with her mother, and helping her father decipher thorny crossword puzzle clues.

Then, in late April, she had received a call from the xenolinguistics department at the Academy, effectively recruiting her to fill in as a visiting lecturer—at the recommendation of an unnamed former professor. At that point she had broken her silence and contacted Spock, furious.

 _Did you have something to do with this? Because I do_ not _need you to find me a job, and I do_ not _want you intervening in my professional life._

Over the poor, halting connection, he had denied any involvement: _I have neither contacted nor spoken with anyone in the xenolinguistics department in over eleven months, Nyota._ An hour later, she had taken the gig.

It was the first of two video calls they would share before reuniting in San Francisco. The second would come after weeks on the road, preparing teaching materials, brushing up on her languages, and reconnecting with old friends, her first real taste of long-distance both deeply lonely and refreshingly uncomplicated.

He would contact her this time, on the second night of a xenolinguistics conference in Shanghai, her last stop before returning to San Francisco, his words stilted and awkward, but his underlying message clear enough:

 _I miss you. I want to see you, if you want to see me._

Their reunion had been…well. Anything but lackluster.

Sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed, Uhura was reminded again, with an uncomfortable twist in her stomach, that they hadn't yet actually spoken about the fight. They would have to eventually—or rather, _she_ would have to put it on the table and hope Spock didn't start dodging her again.

Across the room, Spock was motionless, listening. After another minute of indistinguishable chatter over the comm connection, he spoke: "I will be there shortly."

He closed the comm and turned to face her.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Admiral Barnett has rescheduled the captain's briefing for 0800 this morning, and requested the presence of Mr. Scott, Doctor McCoy, and myself."

Uhura blinked. "What for?"

Spock shifted. "Jim believes the admiral intends to discuss the parameters of a five-year-mission." He paused. "He intends to acquire bagels."

"What do you believe?" Uhura asked.

"My reasoning is inconclusive," Spock said. "It is logical to assume that requiring the senior officers to attend this briefing suggests unusual significance. However, it is also true that the last time the captain assumed our next assignment would be a five-year-mission, he was officially reprimanded by Admiral Pike and removed from his position."

He fell silent, placing the comm on the bedside table and moving to the desk on the other side of the room, where his dress grays were hanging over a chair in a suit bag.

"Right," Uhura said, quietly. _And you transferred_.

Spock glanced at her. "If you are concerned about the possibility of another official reprimand," he said, "you need not be. Jim has had neither had time nor the occasion to compromise his captaincy in the last several months."

Uhura stared at him, then realized Spock had just told her an honest-to-god joke. A laugh, overdue in more ways than one, bubbled out from her chest. "He's had the time," she said, sliding out of bed in search of her duffel. "But I think you're right."

Spock regarded her with a raised eyebrow. "You do not intend to go back to sleep?"

She shrugged. "I'm awake. Might as well go to campus and see if they have office space for me yet."

She waited for the inevitable protests—that she required more sleep than he did, that it was unnecessary for her to come all the way to headquarters when she hadn't been asked to attend the briefing—but they never came.

Spock merely nodded and said, seriously, "I will ask Jim to acquire a bagel for you."

* * *

"Bones. Hey, Bones. Wake up."

It was with the utmost grace and self-control that McCoy managed not to swat Jim's hand off his shoulder when he caught sight of the time. "Something had better be on _fire_ ," he growled.

"Nope. Better."

He didn't have to look at Jim's face—he could hear the grin.

"We got it," Jim said, with barely-contained excitement. "We're going to deep space, I can _feel_ it."

McCoy sat up, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And what, pray tell, makes you say that?"

Jim's footsteps receded into the kitchen: "Barnett rescheduled the briefing to 0800, and he wants us there. You, me, Spock and Scotty."

McCoy frowned. " _All_ of us?"

"You'd best not fight it, laddie," he heard Scotty yawn from the stairs.

From the other room came the sound of the sink running, the clink of ceramic.

"C'mon, Bones, get dressed! I made coffee."

McCoy groaned, and searched in his backpack for something to ward off the inevitable headache. "And for that, I won't seek a swift means of ending your life."

An hour and a half later, between a healthy dose of aspirin, caffeine, and bagel, McCoy felt he'd achieved a bare-minimum of civility that would hopefully carry him until he could retreat somewhere quiet and take a goddamn nap.

Jim had explained it on the light rail out of the city center, pacing back and forth among the sleepy commuters. _We'll talk about it in person_ , Barnett had told him, which wasn't an outright _no_ , meaning it obviously had to be a _yes_ , as in: "Yes, Kirk, you and your crew are getting a five-year mission, but I'm not telling you yet because I want to surprise you in person."

What would have been a real surprise, McCoy thought, was if the Admiralty had given a little more than passing consideration to the scheduling. And the "invitations." It didn't take four senior officers to receive a mission assignment, and besides, Jim would be overjoyed either way. McCoy, for his part, knew he would warm to the idea. Eventually.

They made their way to the Laramie conference room, on the south side of the Daystrom Center facing Marin and the early morning sun, blissfully shaded by the polarized windows. Barnett waiting for them with a PADD in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He looked up at them in grim acknowledgement. "Mr. Kirk," he said.

Jim didn't seem to hear Barnett's tone—either that, or he mistook it for tiredness. "Sir," he replied, eyes bright.

"Be seated, please."

They assembled around the oval-shaped hologram display table. McCoy ended up with his back to the window, next to Scotty and across from Spock and Jim. Barnett didn't look like he was about to be doling out congratulations.

Before the admiral could speak and crush any dreams, however, the conference room doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and a second figure, also in dress grays and admiral's stripes, entered. He wasn't unusually tall, but the way he carried himself made him imposing nonetheless. His hair was an iron gray, his face lined, his figure lean: a man few of them had met in person, but all knew by reputation. To McCoy's left, Scotty sat up visibly straighter.

"Right on time," Barnett said.

McCoy rose with the rest of the room, and Admiral Jonathan Archer assumed a seat at the front of the table. "At ease," he said, curtly.

Archer, McCoy knew, had come out of retirement as the interim head of Starfleet after Alexander Marcus's covert warmongering had been exposed in the aftermath of the Khan madness. Before that, though, he had been present at the tribunal that had removed Jim from command of the _Enterprise_ after Nibiru. From what McCoy had heard, he hadn't exactly come down on Jim's side. McCoy's eyes flicked over to Jim, who briefly returned the glance, his smile faltering.

The only one who seemed unperturbed by his presence was Barnett, who wasted no time tapping into the table's console.

"How's the beagle, Admiral?" he asked.

"Overfed," Archer replied, and Scotty twitched.

"Aren't we all." Barnett finished entering his identification, and the lights overhead dimmed. Across the table, a three-dimensional map of the galaxy flickered to life. He turned to Archer. "All yours."

Archer leaned forward: "Captain, officers. I'd like to preface this by saying what you're about to hear is classified at the highest level."

* * *

It wasn't a five-year-mission.

Jim had known the moment Archer had walked in the room, but before the disappointment could sink in, the word "classified" was coming out of Archer's mouth, and Barnett was tapping a command on the console. The map zoomed in on a familiar cross-section of the galaxy. Jim could see Earth hovering near Scotty's head.

Archer cleared his throat: "At 2100 hours on stardate 2259.187 , a UFP Academy of Sciences research vessel, _Eratosthenes_ , encountered a Klingon freighter about 180,000 kilometers into Federation space." A blue circle appeared at the other end of the table, marking a point near the edge of the Neutral Zone. "The freighter was packed to the seams with Klingons. Upon investigating further, they determined that several of the Klingons had been infected with a virus unknown to Federation medical science. Within a week, both the Klingons and members of the Federation crew had begun to present severe symptoms."

"The details have been sent to you," Barnett said to the table.

On his PADD, Jim found the file and opened it. Words jumped out at him as he scanned a report from the science vessel: _violent fever. Blindness. Delirium. Rapid incubation period. Quarantine._ He swiped through images from the cargo ship's security footage. He glanced up at his crew, who were staring wide-eyed at their own PADDs. Scotty's hand was clapped over his mouth. Bones was muttering something dark and horrified under his breath.

Archer was speaking again, his tone matter-of-fact: "Within two weeks of the initial encounter, nearly every passenger on the Klingon freighter was dead."

"Where are the ships now?" Jim asked.

"We don't know," Barnett replied.

 _What?_

To his right, Spock's voice, almost incredulous: "Admiral?"

"The _Eratosthenes_ ceased relaying information back to Earth shortly after the two-week mark," Archer clarified. "Last message was received at 2201 FST, stardate 2259.202. We had already sent a backup medical team out of Starbase 14 on a research vessel, the USS _Beichen_ , but by the time the _Beichen_ had arrived at the ships' last known location, they had vanished."

"Hang on—that doesn't make any sense." Across the table, Scotty had found his voice. He looked hesitantly between Jim and Admiral Archer. "Even the most efficient ships leave energy signatures; it's like a breadcrumb trail. You just have to know where to look. You're sayin' the _Beichen_ didn't detect any?"

"None," Archer replied.

"If the disease impacted the _Eratosthenes_ crewmembers in the same way it progressed among the Klingons, then it is likely the science vessel's crew are now dead," Spock said. "Leaving little possibility that they left the location of the original encounter."

"Could the ships have been towed?" Jim asked.

"There still would've been an energy signature," Scotty insisted, "from the ship doing the towing."

"If you'll let us continue," Archer said, his tone clipped, "that's what we're here to talk to you about." He glanced to Jim's right. "As you've so tactfully noted, Mr. Spock, there are likely a number of bodies that need to be brought home. And if the virus on the Klingon freighter is as dire as the medical reports we've received seem to suggest, we certainly don't want to leave those ships floating around in space where anyone could find them."

"You're sending us to look for them, then," Jim concluded, looking between Archer and Barnett.

Scotty piped up again, indignant. "Wh— _hang on now._ The _Enterprise_ is still in spacedock—we're barely halfway through the refit. How do you propose that we puddle-jump across the galaxy with half the fuel cells missing and the bloody warp core still under inspection?"

Archer shot Scotty a deep glare. "We're not sending the _Enterprise_. Or her crew."

Jim stared at him. "Then why did you call us here?"

Barnett answered. "As you say, the _Enterprise_ is hardly equipped for a mission of this nature in her current state. We've pulled the USS _Helena_ to search for the missing ships. But from a theoretical standpoint, we've obviously got a bit of a conundrum on our hands." Barnett turned to Scotty, who started, unaccustomed to being addressed directly by the Admiralty. "Lieutenant Commander Scott, as you're one of Starfleet's foremost experts in transport theory, we'd like to reassign you from your duties on the _Enterprise_ refit to attack this from a theoretical standpoint."

Scotty's eyes flicked to Jim, uncertain.

"Is that a problem, Mr. Scott?" Archer asked, coldly, and Jim felt a flash of anger.

Scotty glanced back at Archer, then cleared his throat. "No, sir."

"Admiral, hang on a second. Lieutenant Commander Scott is under my command—" Jim began, but Archer spoke over him:

"Commander Spock, as science officer of the _Enterprise_ , you are to assist Mr. Scott in his efforts."

" _Admiral_."

"Lieutenant Commander McCoy." And now it was Bones's turn to look surprised. "Your work as a medical researcher is underappreciated here at Starfleet. We'd like you to use the _Eratosthenes_ ' reports to make a stab at understanding this disease."

" _Admirals_ ," Jim said, making no attempt to hide his frustration. "I'm glad we share the same confidence in my crew but with respect, if you're gonna put us on this you should send us out—"

Archer leaned forward, finally meeting Jim's eyes and addressing him directly.

"Kirk, I am far from interested in how you feel about Starfleet administration, and given the events of last February, I would think twice before getting up in arms about matters involving the Klingons. You are here as a courtesy due to the captain of the _Enterprise_ , but these assignments are primarily the responsibility of your senior officers. Do I make myself clear?"

Jim's jaw was set. Still meeting Archer's eyes, he let out a breath through his nose. "Yes sir."

Barnett powered down the holo-table and the three-dimensional map vanished. The conference room lights were at full brightness again.

Archer rose and the room rose with him. "Kirk. Officers." The conference room doors hissed shut behind him.

Jim looked at Barnett, who put away his PADD and picked up his cup of coffee, looking tired and grim. "Good luck."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Outside the Daystrom Center, all was quiet and cold. As it was early August, in the sun it might have been warmer, but the tall buildings cast the square into shadow, a chill that blasted through the fabric of Spock's dress grays as he strode outside.

There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat, a current of shame that two days ago the prospect of a mere social engagement had been his most pressing concern. Though his specializations at the Academy and as a science officer were in programming and xenolinguistics, he knew enough to recognize that the outbreak on the missing ships was unprecedented. A quick glance around the room during the briefing had told him his colleagues did as well. He'd hardly missed Doctor McCoy's stark horror as he stared, murmuring to himself, at the screen of his PADD.

The thought brought him back further, to a brief conversation he'd had on New Vulcan with his counterpart from the alternate reality. Ambassador Spock had mused about the fragility of their small diaspora, still building and teaching, but moving only gradually away from Nero's attack. Vulcan healers were in short supply, stretched thin trying to address the profound, overpowering grief of bondmates stripped from their partners, _katras_ lost to the singularity. Some who had survived their families, particularly older Vulcans, had succumbed quietly, slipping from consciousness in their sleep.

The budding colony's internal difficulties had so consumed Spock during his time on New Vulcan that he'd hardly considered the possibility of such external threats. The notion of a pandemic swift and destructive enough to send Klingons fleeing across the Neutral Zone was enough to make him shiver in the early morning chill.

What was it he'd said to Nyota at dinner?

 _The statistical likelihood that such an event would ever reach Federation space is low._

An imprecision—McCoy had mocked him for it—but hardly one that had mattered at the time. They had been speaking in hypotheticals.

Spock pushed the thought from the forefront of his mind. There were more pressing matters to address.

Well ahead of him, Jim was striding across the square. His anger was plain to any observant individual, written into the tension in his shoulders. Spock called after him: "Captain."

Jim did not stop or slow down, and Spock quickened his pace. "Captain," he repeated, a touch louder.

After a few seconds, Jim seemed to admit defeat. His gait slowed, and he stopped approximately halfway across the square. Spock caught up to him moments later.

"Jim," he said.

Jim drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. Finally he spoke, eyes vaguely downcast. "I'm fine, Spock. I'll see that your refit duties are reassigned while you and Mr. Scott work on this."

It was then that Spock realized what Jim was looking at.

It had been less than six months since Khan had opened fire on the Center's 27th floor conference room, killing five officers and injuring thirteen others. The building repairs—as well as the security modifications—had been long completed, leaving the space devoid of any visual reminder of the violence, except for a small plaque in the center of the square listing the names of the dead:

 _Akiko Tanji, Captain. Kit Harrelson, First Officer. Christopher Pike, Admiral._

"Things really are in flux around here, aren't they."

Spock glanced up to find Jim looking at him, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

Jim gave him a grim smile. "If they need two admirals to tell us how to do our jobs and to make Scotty squirm."

It was an ill attempt at humor. Spock inclined his head anyways. "Indeed."

" _Jim!_ "

The shout came from a few meters behind them. Spock turned in unison with Jim to find Doctor McCoy jogging over to them, closely followed by Mr. Scott.

"You all right?" Jim asked McCoy.

The doctor scoffed, broadcasting his incredulity. "Am _I_ all right? You looked like you were about to deck Archer."

Jim shrugged. "Getting court-martialed before nine a.m. didn't seem like a great idea."

"Right. Well." McCoy's eyes flicked briefly to Spock, then back to Jim. "I should probably start going through these," he said, holding up his PADD. "See what I can find. If anything."

Jim nodded. "You gonna get your stuff later?"

"Yeah. I'll comm you." He clapped Jim on the shoulder and started off in the direction of Starfleet Medical.

Mr. Scott arrived moments later, pale and sweating, and Jim gave him similar reassurances about his refit duties: he would pass them along to Lieutenant Keenser for the time being, to which Mr. Scott agreed wholeheartedly. Jim walked with them to the edge of the square before they finally parted ways, Spock and Scotty to one of the Academy simulation labs to begin their work, and Jim presumably to the light rail station to make his way back into the city proper.

"Spock," Jim called after him, just as he was about to disappear into an adjacent alley. Spock turned.

Jim made another ill attempt at a smile before he disappeared around the corner. "Let me know if there's anything I can do."

* * *

For the first few moments after exiting the turbolift into the xenolinguistics department, Uhura was half-convinced she'd gotten off on the wrong floor.

Things had been rearranged since she'd been a cadet. The information boards describing courses and instructor biographies had been relocated further down the hall, and the large, potted fern that had graced the door beside the professors' lounge—the one she'd taken upon herself to diligently water throughout her time as a TA—had disappeared. She recalled the room numbers, though, and made her way to the office of the Department Chair.

At first glance, the office seemed empty, no light emanating out from behind the opaque glass. Uhura knocked tentatively, glancing at the empty nameplate. A few moments passed, then a shadow across the door signaled movement within.

"Come in!"

She frowned, not recognizing the voice of the owner. Over the summer, her primary point of contact with the Academy had been the first-year dean and the xenolinguistics department's new administrative yeoman. Administrative shifting throughout the Academy, she'd been told, meant for changes in leadership in many departments. When she'd accepted the job, they hadn't yet elected the current chair.

The door slid open, and Uhura was greeted by the sight of a stack of books—old-fashioned paper ones with oddly cut-corners—tottering on a swivel chair. The books tilted dangerously and Uhura darted forward, placing a hand flat on top of the stack, just as another hand darted out from her left to do the same.

The man attached to it laughed. He was friendly but unfamiliar, with gray, curly hair and a warm smile that crinkled his eyes. "My apologies! I've never been much good at traveling light. You must be Lieutenant Uhura. Barry Petterson. Please, sit!"

Ignoring Uhura's protests, he picked up the stack of books and transferred them to a desk laden with PADDs before turning to an electric kettle on a nearby shelf. As he did, it became clear to Uhura that she _did_ remember him, if only peripherally.

The bulk of Academy instructors were recruited from within the officer ranks, but a fair few were civilians. Professor Barry Petterson, a Tellarite specialist from Boston, was one of them. He had been at the Academy when Uhura was a cadet—she'd seen his name in the course catalogue—but she'd never had a class with him. By the time she'd had enough background to do so he was on an extended sabbatical off-world. Senior year she had begun work on her thesis, but of course, that work had been cut short.

Uhura pushed that particular thought from the forefront of her mind. It did her no good to dwell on it now.

Finally, when the water had boiled and a pot of black tea was steaming between them, Petterson fell easily into the chair opposite hers and extended a hand. "We weren't expecting you until next week," he said. "Change of plans?"

Uhura thought back to Kirk's giddy comm and wondered how the briefing was going. A change of _someone's_ plans, evidently.

"I just got back to the city," she replied, returning Petterson's cheerful smile. "I thought I'd ask about office space."

"Fair enough." Petterson turned to the stack of PADDs on his desk, squinted at it, and pinched the middlemost one between two fingers, tugging gingerly at it like a jenga block. When it was free, he frowned at it and discarded it, then pulled the next one up, brightening. "You'll have to excuse me, Lieutenant. They changed the linkup system; it's a great deal more secure now, and a great deal more difficult to access…ah, there we go."

He pulled forward the monitor console on his desk, shifting it and the sea of paraphernalia around it so that Uhura could examine it as well. "We have you in room 109. They've shuffled us around this year—hence the chaos."

Uhura stared at the screen, searching for the room, raising her eyebrows when she couldn't find it. "109?"

"Downstairs in the link."

Of course. That made sense. She was new, temporary. She could hardly expect premium office space.

Petterson tapped out something on his PADD and it made a gentle whistling noise. "I've just sent you the door code…you can update the settings as you please to accommodate for office hours and such."

A message notification dinged on his PADD.

"Well, that was quick. And it looks like your faculty housing is ready as well. Fair warning, it's not the most glamorous accommodations."

Uhura smiled gently. "That's not a problem, Professor. I'm used to bunking on a starship."

"Of course, of course."

As necessary as her travels over the summer had been, Uhura was ready to occupy her own space, glad to be settling in to a new routine. It had been a long time since anyone had accused her of _nesting_. (Gaila during their first month rooming together came to mind). But when it came down to it, Uhura preferred the stability of returning to the same bed at night, even if that bed was situated in her cramped quarters on the _Enterprise_. Or—she suppressed a smile—someone else's.

That line of thought led unavoidably to a string of memories of Spock's faculty apartment, which had also been far from glamorous, though neither he nor Uhura had taken issue with that fact. Her badly-suppressed smile turned into a badly-suppressed grin.

Fortunately, at that moment Petterson received another message notification, and his bushy eyebrows shot upward. "Lieutenant, I'm terribly sorry to rush you out, but it seems I have a dentist's appointment," he said, standing and reaching for his coat, slung haphazardly over the back of his chair. "But if you want to swing by the housing office, it seems they're ready for you."

Uhura stood with him, stepping out into the cool hallway, thanking him for his time.

"Not at all!" Petterson replied, beaming, "As you can see I also have yet to get organized." As if to illustrate the point, he began checking his pockets, extracting a set of flitter keys and a stylus before frowning and ducking back into his office.

Uhura glanced down the hallway at the chronometer spelling out the time: 0845. Not long enough for a full mission briefing, but not short enough for a preliminary assignment either. She wondered absently if Kirk really had been right—if they were being briefed for a five-year-mission.

"I just wanted to say, Lieutenant," came Petterson's voice from within, slightly muffled as if he were searching inside a closet, "we're very glad to have you!"

"Thank you!" Uhura called back.

"Commander Spock spoke very highly of you."

 _What?_

Uhura blinked. "Excuse me, Professor?" she asked.

Petterson reemerged, holding a bent faculty ID card. "Commander Spock. He spoke very highly of you."

"Oh. I'm…glad to hear that," Uhura heard herself say.

Petterson's eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. "Please don't hesitate to sing out if you need anything." With that—following a short battle with the door code—he turned down the corridor and disappeared.

* * *

The sim lab wasn't quite the same as the one where he'd made the calculations that would decide the future of Admiral Archer's ill-fated beagle, but the setup was close.

Montgomery Scott leaned on the holo table before him and rubbed his eyes, as, for the fifth time, he went over his calculations again and, for the fifth time, found them wanting. It was like his senior year as a cadet all over again, solving proofs into the wee hours of the morning, with only short breaks to down coffee and order takeout while he pursued the elusive thread of his trans-warp beaming equation. In fact, he had half a mind to do just that. It was getting close to lunchtime, and his stomach had begun to growl.

Loudly.

"Mr. Scott, are you quite well?"

His belly had just given a particularly loud protest. Scotty glanced up to find Mr. Spock staring at him across the table.

"Unbelievably, sir. Just a wee bit peckish."

 _Could ask the same of you though_ , Scotty added to himself.

Four times in as many hours, out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen the commander frowning at the screen of his PADD, with something a mite more troubled than just pure focus.

"Perhaps you should take a short break to consume a meal," Spock said, head bent over the table at the shimmering, holographic models of the missing ships. Of the two, the _Eratosthenes_ was far more detailed. They had access to the full specs, after all. The Klingon freighter was much more of a mystery, their model barely a shell based on data received from the scientists. The lack of information was, at least to Scotty, endlessly frustrating. As was having only the taciturn first officer for a sympathetic ear. Scotty was _this_ close to taking Jim up on his offer for an extra set of eyes. The lad was more an expert in tactics and diplomacy than in warp physics, but desperate times…

Scotty sent Spock a sidelong glance. He'd hardly missed the _you_ in the Vulcan's statement. "That's all right," he said. "I was just thinking of getting something delivered. D'you like lo mein?"

"I do not require a midday meal."

Right. Of course. Vulcans and their enviable metabolism.

"…Lo mein it is," Scotty said.

They continued to work in silence.

Normally Scotty relished this kind of thing. The thrill of the chase, so to speak. These days, at least 'till now, his time had been consumed by the _Enterprise_ refit. And that was fine by him; there was little to compare with the joy of breathing life back into his fair lady. But he was used to devoting hours of his spare time to recreating his—the other Spock's?—transwarp beaming equation, which Command had confiscated on the spot the minute they learned about it.

Refitting aside, _most_ of the time Scotty was a troubleshooter. But for every day he spent working on ship repairs and tune-ups, there were little snatches—an hour here, a few minutes there—when he got to be visionary. And under any other circumstances, the puzzle of how two ships had seemingly been zapped right out of existence would have fallen neatly into that category.

This, though—sleep-deprived and starving and with the potential fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance… Scotty rubbed his eyes again and let out a quiet sigh.

He needed someone he could really vent to. At least a _little_.

The thought occurred to him then.

"Mr. Spock."

Spock glanced up, saying nothing. True to form, he waited for Scotty to continue.

Scotty cleared his throat. "I'd like to make a somewhat unorthodox request."

Spock put down his PADD. "Very well."

"I don't know about you, but I'm getting nowhere with this, and I think both of us could benefit from a little outside input."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Whose do you suggest?"

"I know he hasn't got the security clearance yet, but I was thinking Mr. Chekov, sir." Spock's head canted to one side. Scotty licked his lips and continued. "See, as you know he's been shadowing me in engineering, and he's just completed a certification in advanced warp technology." Still nothing. "I realize it's not quite up to regulations, but maybe we can get an ok from Barnett? I really think we could use him, and where Admiral Archer is concerned, well, it's not like I haven't been down that road before, and—"

"Mr. Scott."

Scotty paused mid-ramble. "Yes, sir?"

"Your reasoning is sound. Would you prefer to contact Mr. Chekov, or should I?"

Scotty grinned. "I'll do it. Happy to, sir."

* * *

Her name was Dasha and she was a radio producer, and somewhere between his mother's cooking, his grandfather's stories, and his long stints in the municipal library reading up on transwarp beaming, Chekov had fallen in love with her. He was proud of the fact that _he_ had asked _her_ out the first time, and prouder of the fact that she'd actually said yes. She was a couple of years older than him, but that didn't matter because he was a Starfleet officer, and he'd seen and done things an average nineteen-year-old couldn't even dream of.

Everything about her was somewhat old-fashioned: her job, her interests, the way she wore her hair back, in a loose, wispy French braid. Over the last four months, Chekov had spent a small fortune on flowers and paper stationery. They'd spent hours walking in the park, getting tea, talking about space and radio and all the far-flung planets they wanted to see before they died. She was the first girl he'd ever kissed (or the first girl who'd ever kissed him—he was a little fuzzy on the details). They'd taken the train to Moscow and spent hours exploring the still-beautiful antique metro, and everything about that day had been perfect.

Except that now it was August and they were standing in the park, and Dasha was looking at him with something like regret and something else like pity.

"Pavel," she was saying, "you need to be realistic about this. You leave for San Francisco in a month. You probably leave for _space_ in January."

"But I would be _back_." He had been protesting for the last twenty minutes. "And I could contact you on the subspace frequencies—it's _space_ , not death—and I would come see you whenever I'm back on Earth."

She caught his hands in hers and ran her fingers over his palms. "I know, and it's very sweet of you to say that. But you don't know when you would be back. And to be honest, I can't promise you I would be here."

He didn't know how to respond to that. His shoulders must have slumped—his entire body must have slumped—because she gave him a sad smile and kissed his cheek. "You'll be fine, Pavel. You're a Starfleet officer, remember?"

Then she was gone.

Half an hour later, back in his parents' house Chekov walked right past the living room without saying hello to his mother. As he climbed the stairs—two at a time—he could hear the gentle pulse of his grandfather's heart monitor. Then he entered the room, and there he was: Arkady Leonidivich Chekov, all bushy eyebrows and deep-set wrinkles, awake and waiting for him. He had a paper book in his hands. He raised an eyebrow as Chekov threw himself into an armchair by the bed.

" _How'd it go?_ " he asked. He spoke very little Standard, and so Chekov responded in Russian.

" _Terrible_ ," he said, miserably.

" _Oh?_ "

" _She_ dumped _me_."

Arkady laughed. " _It's been known to happen_."

" _But everything was going well!_ "

" _You leave in a month, Pavel; you can't expect her to wait around for you_."

" _I would wait around for her!_ "

" _You'd be ridiculous to do so. What you_ should _do is go back to that ship of yours and find yourself a nice girl there. Or two or three._ "

Chekov looked reproachfully at his grandfather, who was setting aside his book with a smirk and reaching for the chessboard on the bedside table. Chekov picked it up for him and placed it flat on the tray table spanning the width of the bed. He started setting up the pieces, glaring at the board. " _After this, I've sworn off women._ "

" _Uh-huh. Like I've sworn off vodka,_ " Arkady said. " _Don't tell your father_ ," he added, as an afterthought.

Chekov didn't respond. He nudged the bishop into place and sat back in the armchair, arms crossed.

Arkady sat up, readjusting his position to better examine the board. " _Come on, boy, you can't sulk all evening. Blue or gold?_ "

" _Watch me_ ," Chekov muttered, leaning forward. " _Gold._ "

Three hours later gold and blue chess pieces littered the sides of the tray table, and Chekov knew he had been thoroughly beaten. He hadn't said anything yet, but Arkady knew it too. The old man smiled as Chekov studied the board.

" _You need to work on your strategy,_ " he said. " _What are they teaching you on that ship of yours?_ "

" _Stellar cartography and engineering_ ," Chekov replied. " _And poker_."

" _Poker? A different kind of strategy,_ " Arkady mused.

" _Since when do you play poker?_ "

" _Once I lost quite a bit of money to your great aunt Annika over a poker game. Woman could bluff like you wouldn't believe_ —"

Arkady broke off, suddenly seized by violent coughs. He was bent double, one hand gripping the edge of the tray table. Chekov reacted immediately, pushing aside the chessboard and reaching for the metal dish they kept sitting on the bedside table, positioning it in front of Arkady, then reaching for the pack of tissues that sat behind it. The old man hacked and spat blood into the metal dish. There were footsteps on the stairs, and then Chekov's mother Sofiya was there with a hypospray.

Chekov got out of her way and stepped back. He caught sight of a blue rook lying on the floor, one that had rolled off the bed when he'd moved the chessboard. He bent to pick it up.

" _Slight pinch_ ," he heard his mother say, and watched his grandfather wince as she pressed the hypospray against his neck.

Slowly Arkady's coughing began to subside, and Sofiya handed him a tissue, removing the dish. More quick footfalls on the stairs. Chekov turned and saw his father in the doorway, staring at _his_ father in bed, a question on his lips.

Arkady saw him and immediately waved him off. " _I'm fine, Andrei, I'm fine_." He coughed again. " _It's not serious_."

" _You're sure?_ " Andrei asked, frowning.

Arkady nodded.

Andrei's eyes moved to his son, and Chekov glanced away, back to his mother and grandfather.

" _What can I…_ " he began.

" _Don't worry, boy, I'm all right_ ," Arkady said. " _Go help your father_."

Chekov watched his mother put bloodstained tissues in the trash can by the bed, then rise to check Arkady's vitals on the bioscreen. At the beginning of the summer, Chekov knew, she'd fought tooth and nail with Arkady's doctors until they'd agreed to let one of the nurses train her how to use the equipment so the man could rest at home, instead of in an anonymous hospital room.

He glanced back to the doorway and found it empty. Reluctantly, he pulled himself away.

Downstairs his father was standing at the kitchen sink, washing a pan.

" _You missed dinner_ ," he said, without turning around.

Chekov stood there for a moment without answering. Andrei's words were a variation on a theme, one he'd been hearing since May.

" _I'm sorry_ ," Chekov said.

" _You don't need to lie to me_."

Chekov felt himself bristle. " _Dasha broke up with me, if that makes you feel any better_ ," he said, coldly.

" _I'm sorry to hear that_ ," Andrei answered.

" _Don't lie to me and I won't lie to you_."

His father shut off the tap and turned around. Like Chekov he was rail thin, and his eyes flashed when he was angry.

" _Your mother has hardly seen you this summer_."

" _Maybe I should be upstairs with her, then_." Chekov turned and started for the stairs.

" _Do not_ _walk away from me, boy_."

" _I am_ not _a boy_."

" _You say that but you don't act like it_."

Chekov spun around. " _How_ _should I act, then?_ " he demanded. " _What should I have been doing these last three months? Waiting around the house doing nothing?_ "

" _We hardly_ know _you, Pavel._ "

Chekov stopped, because his father's arms had dropped to his sides, and he was staring at him, shaking his head.

" _All day you're gone, at the library buried in engineering files, or in Moscow with that girl, or god knows where, and when you come back home you sit down with your grandfather for a game of chess, and it's like you can't wait to run away again. You've always been running_. _To science camps, to San Francisco, to the black_ , _for God's sake. When are you going to realize you don't need to run from us?_ "

Chekov stared at his father. He didn't have an answer to that, and he never got a chance to think of one. From upstairs, he heard the familiar _chirp_ of his comm, which he'd left sitting on his bedside table all summer.

" _I have to get that_ ," he mumbled.

He took the stairs two at a time, and his father didn't follow him.

His childhood bedroom was a time capsule, practically unchanged from the day he'd left for Starfleet at age thirteen. A model of an early Kelvin-class starship hung from the ceiling above his bed. On the walls, there were star charts, hasty drawings of constellations, and proofs he'd solved as a bored child, sitting at the back of the classroom while everyone around him struggled with fractions and multiplication tables.

Chekov snatched the comm off his desk and flipped it open.

"Ensign Chekov," he said in Standard, a little winded.

"Laddie!"

Chekov frowned. "Mr. Scott?"

"What're you up to?"

Chekov glanced at his bedroom door and restrained a sigh. "Wery little."

"Oh, good," Mr. Scott said cheerfully. "Got a little transport physics problem for you. How would you design a ship system that completely recycles its emissions?"

Chekov frowned. "Completely, sir?"

"Aye."

"Such technology does not exist. At least, not yet."

"Aye, that's what I thought too. 'Til this morning, anyways."

Chekov sat up a little straighter. There were questions swirling through his mind now, eclipsing the argument with his father.

"Interested?" Mr. Scott asked.

Chekov felt a tug at the corners of his mouth. "Wery much so, sir."

"Can you make it out to San Francisco by this evening?"

"This evening?"

"Aye. Well. Your tomorrow morning, I suppose. Bit of an urgent matter, actually."

Downstairs, Chekov could hear his father pacing back and forth in the kitchen. "It's not a problem," he said finally.

"Excellent. See you then! Scott out."

After signing off, Chekov wandered back into his grandfather's room. He found Arkady sitting upright, his eyes closed.

" _Your father means well_ ," Arkady said, after a moment.

Chekov let out a breath and sat quietly in the chair beside the bed. " _You heard all of that,_ " he said, deflated.

" _And then some. Are you headed back to San Francisco, then?_ " Arkady asked.

Chekov glanced at him. His grandfather's bushy eyebrows crinkled, though his eyes remained shut.

" _Yes. In the morning,_ " Chekov said. He felt a twinge of guilt and added, " _They asked for my help_."

A vague smile tugged at the corner of Arkady's mouth. " _You had better get packed._ "

Chekov glanced at the chessboard, which was now neatly put away on the bedside table, most likely his mother's doing. He didn't answer right away. Arkady then leaned forward suddenly, grasping Chekov's arm with one, gnarled, spotted hand. He was surprisingly strong, and his eyes were wide open.

" _I'm an old man, Pavel. I'm not going anywhere,"_ he said. Then: " _Your crew needs you. It is no small thing."_

* * *

There was nowhere to go but home, and at home there was nothing to do. Jim checked his PADD for messages about the new material specs for the refit, thinking he could hop on a shuttle to Riverside, and found nothing. They weren't even due to arrive at the shipyard for at least another two weeks.

Passing through the kitchen, he noticed the stack of plates and utensils he'd left on the counter the night before. He glanced at the clock: 9:50 am.

There was nothing for it. He set his PADD on the bar, linked it to the speakers, and queued up a classical playlist. To a heavy bass and shrieking vocals, he did the dishes: everything from the night before, and then an old, filthy camping pot of Di Rezze's he found under the sink, which he attempted to give new life with a handful of steel wool.

When he reached for another dish and came up empty, it only made sense that he then glance around the room and notice that the floor was kind of gross. And if he spent the next hour and a half taking a rag to hardwood that probably hadn't seen cleaning solution in well over a year, then it only made sense that he then get out the vacuum and take care of the carpet upstairs. For the sake of thoroughness.

And if thoroughness included doing three loads of laundry, paying the bills, watering the plants, and cleaning every dusty surface in the living room…well…nobody was around to judge him.

That, and Di Rezze owed him, big time.

By hour four, he was beginning to feel lightheaded from chemical fumes, and forced himself to take a walk around the park. When he got back, it was barely 3:30 p.m.

All at once he felt ready to collapse, so he made another cup of coffee—his third—and sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window. It had proven to be one of those summer days where the sun couldn't make up its mind about whether it wanted to stick around. One minute the fog was in, the next it was out.

The lull and the caffeine gave him space to think.

It wasn't getting chewed out in front of his crew that bothered him. He'd been chewed out before, by people who mattered more to him than Jonathan stick-up-his-ass Archer. What bothered him was standing outside the Daystrom Center, turning around in the sunlight and seeing Spock just staring at him, wearing the world's best poker face and yet _somehow_ still communicating sympathy.

Jim's eyes fell on the couch, where the sleeping bag he'd lent Bones was halfheartedly folded over one of the arms. Only hours ago, he'd been shaking Bones awake, giddy, unflinchingly certain they were off again to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations…

He thought about the pictures from the briefing file, and how he'd never really appreciated having a target you could actually see.

A thought occurred to him then, and he picked up his PADD. Out in the black, he always asked for the opinions of his fellow officers, but he wasn't usually one to ask for advice from over his own head.

 _Better late than never,_ he thought dryly, scrolling through contact files.

He got as far as the C's before he remembered, and stopped.

He put the PADD down and took another sip of coffee. Back during their first or second year at the Academy, Bones had told him about this kind of thing. That sometimes he'd catch himself starting to type out a letter to David McCoy, before he'd remember and stop. Sometimes he'd get all the way through writing the letter, then wind up saving the draft just to have it. Jim had always been aware this kind of thing happened. He'd just never imagined he'd be experiencing it himself, now.

Jim picked up the PADD again and, without quite realizing what he was doing, found himself searching for his mother's contact information.

 _You can call me,_ she'd said, before he boarded the shuttle back to San Francisco. _If you want, that is._

 _We should keep in touch_ , he'd replied. The words had come out stilted, like they'd exchanged contact information at a cadet review. She'd hugged him goodbye, and that had felt stilted too, so at least it wasn't just him.

He hit _call_ and waited. A few rings came and went with no response. He hit _cancel_ before the video messenger could tell him she was unavailable and set the PADD aside. He finished his coffee and wandered into the kitchen, placing his cup by the sink.

Then he wandered back and picked up his PADD again.

This time, Winona Kirk's face swam into view after two rings, blurry and pixelated. The image sharpened a little, enough for Jim to see it was dark out and remember the time difference.

"Jim?" Winona asked.

"Hey—sorry, I forgot it's late where you are."

"Don't worry about it. What's going on?"

Her answer came without hesitation, and it caught Jim off-guard. It struck him that there wasn't anything he could actually say to her that wasn't classified.

"I…um…" he floundered, before landing on something. "There's a rechristening ceremony for the _Enterprise_ in January. I could swing it for you to be there. If you want."

Winona raised her eyebrows, then nodded. "I would like that." She paused. "Is everything ok?"

No. There are a couple of missing ships containing a deadly virus somewhere on the edge of Federation space with galaxy-altering potential. Spock and Scotty are trying to figure out how to find them and Bones is cutting his teeth on trying to understand the virus, but since there's fuck-all _I_ can do to help, I just spent four hours stress-cleaning.

Jim fantasized briefly about breaking protocol and telling her— _don't go anywhere near Klingon space. Shit, don't even leave the Alpha Quadrant_ —but he knew from her assignment file she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Now she was staring at him like she thought maybe the image had frozen.

"…Kind of a shitshow of a morning, to be honest," he said, finally.

"Wanna tell me about it?"

Jim shook his head. "It's not a big deal."

Winona give him a tired smile. "Maybe you should go up to that ship of yours. Get off-planet for a few hours, clear your head."

Jim's mouth went dry.

It wasn't like he hadn't toyed with the idea of going to spacedock before. The thought had come up earlier in the summer. Hell, it came up every few days—followed by a now familiar wave of nausea at the thought of taking a stroll through engineering. On some level, Jim knew he would have to solve this particular problem before the _Enterprise_ was reassigned. He'd given himself a timeline.

All of that—the warp core malfunction, the serum produced from Khan's blood—was classified too. Winona knew none of it. Jim lied easily.

"They're testing life support systems today, otherwise I would," he said. "Rather not get sucked out an airlock by mistake."

"Fair enough." Winona yawned then, long and silent, trying to suppress it behind her hand. "Oof. Sorry, Jim."

"No, no, it's ok," Jim shook his head. "You should go to sleep."

"If you do want to talk, let me know."

"Ok. Yeah." He paused for only a moment before adding, "Hey, be safe."

Winona raised an amused eyebrow and Jim shrugged.

"Those soil samples. You never know."

After Winona hung up, Jim sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. There was something he was forgetting, but he wasn't sure what. It came to him when his stomach growled, and he glanced at the clock to remember that he'd missed lunch by a solid couple of hours.

The idea of heating up leftovers and eating alone at the kitchen counter felt uncharacteristically depressing, so he pulled out his comm.

"Bones."

No reply.

Slipping the comm back into his pocket, Jim went in search of his phone and found it sitting on the kitchen counter.

 _how's it going?_ his text read.

Bones's reply came a few moments later, all monosyllables and irascible sentence fragments:

 _ **Bones**_ _: data files fucking nightmare_

 _ **Bones**_ _: unreadable_

 _ **Jim**_ _: you hungry?_

 _ **Bones**_ _: no_

Jim tried unsuccessfully to curb his disappointment. Before he could try again, another text buzzed into view.

 _ **Bones**_ _: need favor_

 _ **Jim**_ _: what's up?_

 _ **Bones**_ _: problem w/temp quarters_

 _ **Bones**_ _: can I crash on your couch?_

Jim felt the corner of his mouth twitch. _That_ was a softball if he'd ever seen one.

 _ **Jim**_ _: no, sorry. couch is taken. guess you'll have to sleep in the park_

No response. Jim frowned. Normally Bones returned snark with snark. He tapped out another message:

 _ **Jim**_ _: you can have the spare room. Scotty has temporary quarters. Or spacedock. He'll probably sleep in spacedock, actually._

 _ **Bones**_ _: ok_

 _ **Jim**_ _: you sure you're not hungry? I was gonna get takeout. I can lightrail over_

 _ **Bones**_ _: not at sfg_

 _ **Bones**_ _: moth be whirl_

Jim stared at his comm screen.

 _ **Jim**_ _: what?_

 _ **Bones**_ _: curry_

 _ **Bones**_ _: jesus fuck_

 _ **Bones**_ _: sorry_

 _ **Bones**_ _: might be awhile_

 _ **Jim**_ _: where are you?_

A few minutes later he received a one-word reply.

 _ **Bones**_ _: mikes_

Jim let out a long breath. "…Right."

* * *

Mike's still didn't have a sign, and judging by the state of the street, not much else had changed in the last six years. Jim approached a grimy glass door and pushed inside.

At four in the afternoon, the room was all but empty, except for a tall, solidly-built woman behind the bar, polishing glasses and cleaning the taps. She looked up, fixing Jim with a red, cybernetic eye, and a dark brown humanoid one. The corner of her mouth quirked upward.

"James Kirk," she said.

"Hi, Tells."

"Heard you saved the world again."

 _I'm scared, Spock._

Jim's heart missed a beat.

For a terrifying split second, he'd been behind the glass again, staring up at Spock as his vision blurred and faded.

He looked around: maroon pleather covering the booth seats, the ancient jukebox in the corner of the room, gray light filtering through the grimy windows. Still in the bar.

It was the second time this had happened to him. The first had been in mid-July, not long after he'd gotten back from Caerus IX. One moment he was standing in line at a deli near the Academy campus, waiting on a sandwich, and the next he was staring up at the radiation containment door, his limbs leaden, his heartbeat dangerously slow. When he'd snapped out of it he'd stumbled outside, so shaken that he made it halfway to the light rail stop before remembering to pick up his order. At the same time, it had been so fleeting that on the way home he was almost able to convince himself he'd imagined it. Almost.

Tells didn't seem to have noticed anything amiss. Her back was turned, and she was replacing a pint glass on a high shelf. Jim caught his breath, and filed the brief lapse—he couldn't bring himself to think the word _hallucination_ —away to contemplate later.

"Something like that," he answered, finally.

"What can I get you?"

Jim leaned on the counter. "I'm just here to check on a friend."

Over her thick shoulder, Tells gave him a cold and familiar look. "I have been telling you for six years, Kirk, you come into my bar, you buy a drink. I'm not running a public daycare."

"Tells, where is he?"

The bartender fell silent. She turned around, fixing her cybernetic eye on him again. Then she picked up another pint glass. She gestured with it toward the back of the room, to the hallway by the jukebox. "In the back."

Jim returned a smile. "Next time I save the world I'll throw a party here and we'll call it even, ok?"

Tells rolled her eye—the one that wasn't red and glaring at him—and set an empty tumbler on the bar in front of him. "Tell him to pay his damn tab."

Jim picked up the glass and gave her a salute over his shoulder. Past the jukebox and in the back room, it didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

Bones looked like hell. He was sitting by himself at the booth jammed furthest into the corner, with a tumbler and a half-empty bottle of what was almost certainly bootleg Romulan ale.

Jim slid into the booth. "Hey."

Bones glanced at him sidelong and lifted his glass an inch off the table in reply.

Jim pointed at the bottle. "How much did you spend to get Tells to break that out for ya?"

"Y'want some?"

"If only to save you the hangover."

"Oh, well now you're gonna have to get your own," Bones growled. He poured a finger of the electric blue liquid into his glass and promptly downed it.

"Rude," Jim said. "For a guy who's crashing at his best friend's apartment, anyways." Bones didn't answer. Time to drop the jokes, then. "Should I ask, or should I leave it?"

Bones stared down at the table. "Called Joce. Pushed off Jojo's visit."

Right. That would do it.

Jim was familiar with Bones's particular brand of tailspin. He had seen it before, mostly at the Academy. Bones's first week of flight training. Joanna's birthday their second year. Finals, fall 2257. Neuroses aside, most of the time he was ok, but every once in awhile, Bones would dig himself into a hole and forget how to climb out. There wasn't much to be done about it but wait for the storm clouds to pass.

"Wanna talk about it?" Jim asked.

"No."

Silence fell between them again. Jim tried to come up with something to say, something to salvage the situation, to pull Bones back a little bit out of his shell of angry, neurotic self-loathing.

All he could think of was the Laramie Conference room, the pictures in the briefing file. Scotty shrinking into his seat when Archer entered the room. Spock and Uhura, avoiding each other's eyes at dinner.

Jim sat back in the booth for a moment, before opening his mouth again.

"Wanna get blindingly, hideously wasted?"

Bones didn't say a word—just refilled his glass, and tipped a generous slug of Romulan ale into Jim's.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N** : Heads-up: potentially squicky content ahead. Scroll to the end of the chapter for more detail (and possible spoilers).

* * *

Chapter 4

To: Winona M. Kirk

From: Christopher Pike

Subject: Regarding your son, James

Sent: 2255.248, 2337 FST

 _Dear Lieutenant Kirk,_

 _You don't know me, but I'm writing to you in my capacity as a recruiting officer for Starfleet. About three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting your son, James, and it seems I've convinced him to enlist._

 _This year I was part of a recruitment tour that took us back to San Francisco via Riverside. Our last night in town, I received a comm about an altercation at a bar involving four of our cadets (all probably bound for security track, if you take my meaning) and a local resident. Turned out the resident was your son. Just so you're aware, he has received medical attention since then and sustained no permanent or serious injuries._

 _To hear the witnesses tell it, he was defending himself in an unfair fight, and damn near wiped the floor with his attackers. Some would call that lack of caution; I'd call it guts._

 _I won't beat around the bush. Your son's aptitude tests are off the charts, although I imagine you already knew that. He has a remarkable potential for command, flight, engineering—whatever he chooses. I'd put my money on command. He seems to have a strong understanding of people. All of this is to say: I believe he'll do well in Starfleet, and I believe Starfleet would be crazy not to accept him._

 _My understanding is that you and James aren't close. To be clear, I'm not writing to pressure either of you into contacting each other, or to interrogate you about James' upbringing. I'm predicting some ratty tabloid is going to pick up on his enlistment and make a stink of it. If it's not disgustingly arrogant of me to say this, it seemed wrong for you to have to find out that way._

 _Best regards,_

 _Christopher Pike, Capt._

Starfleet Command

San Francisco, CA

 **...**

To: Christopher Pike

From: Winona M. Kirk

Subject: RE: Regarding your son, James  
Sent: 2255.252, 0422 FST

 _Dear Captain Pike,_

 _I'm afraid you're mistaken about my rank, as I'm no longer in Starfleet. I gave up my commission years ago. I'm surprised my account is still live; I thought it had been deactivated._

 _You're also mistaken in thinking I don't know who you are. It took me a moment to remember why when I first saw your ID, but as it happens, I've read your dissertation on the Kelvin incident. I doubt this comes as a surprise, but you're not the first person to contact me about Jim. You're lucky I appreciate good writing._

 _That sounds like Jim, although I wouldn't have put my money on him "wiping the floor" with anyone, especially security-track knuckleheads. Sounds like he's picked up some new skills in the last couple years._

" _Not close" is a diplomatic way of putting it, so I'm glad this isn't an interrogation. Jim's been making his own decisions for a long time. If you're writing to me about his enlistment out of some kind of duty to me as a parent, rest assured you don't need to. I'm not the one you need to convince._

 _That said, it was kind of you to reach out. I've handled my fair share of ratty tabloids in my time, but I appreciate the thought._

 _Out of curiosity, what was the name of the bar?_

 _Best regards,_

 _Winona Kirk_

UFP Academy of Sciences

Department of Agricultural Terraforming

Research Division

 _PS: I'm much more accessible via my civilian account at the Academy of Sciences._

 _..._

To: Winona M. Kirk

From: Christopher Pike

Subject: RE: Regarding your son, James

Sent: 2255.252, 0715 FST

 _Dear Mrs. Kirk,_

 _More than your fair share, I'll bet. I apologize if I came across as presumptuous._

 _I didn't see much of the fight, but I got the impression if the cadets had been a man short, things might have gone quite a bit differently._

 _I'm glad you thought my dissertation was decent. If I might ask, which version did you read? A redacted copy was made public record right after the incident. A (mostly) uncensored version was made accessible to crewmembers at that point as well, but it was only disclosed to the public ten years after the fact._

 _If you don't want to answer that, just say so and I'll back off._

 _The bar is called "Moe's". It's on Route 10, halfway between the town and the shipyard._

 _Best,_

 _Chris Pike_

Starfleet Command

San Francisco, CA

 _..._

To: Christopher Pike

From: Winona M. Kirk

Subject: RE: Regarding your son, James

Sent: 2255.252, 2356 FST

 _Dear Captain Pike,_

 _Not as presumptuous as you think. Really, though—I appreciate it. I actually got an interview request not six hours after you sent me your first message, so…good timing. (Not from a tabloid per se, but from The_ _Flare. Normally those messages go straight to my junk folder.)_

 _Believe me, if I don't want to answer something, I'll say so. I didn't realize there was an uncensored version. I was off-planet during the ten-year anniversary—wanted to avoid all the pomp and circumstance. I probably missed the notifications._

 _To be completely honest, I only read the redacted version about six years ago. It was better than decent—it was thorough. I had only read the initial debrief reports—the ones that were written up right after the attack, when they were still cobbling together data on what had happened. The first few years afterwards were pretty rough on me and my family. Your dissertation was helpful. At this point I try not to think too much about regrets, but sometimes I really wish I'd read it sooner._

 _Ah, Moe's. Figures._

 _Best,_

 _Winona_

UFP Academy of Sciences

Department of Agricultural Terraforming

Research Division

 _PS: You can call me Winona, although "Ms. Kirk" is fine if you'd prefer to stand on ceremony._

 **...**

To: Christopher Pike

From: Winona M. Kirk

Subject: RE: Regarding your son, James

Sent: 2255.253, 0311 FST

 _Dear Captain Pike,_

 _Do you think you could get me a copy of the uncensored dissertation?_

 _Winona_

UFP Academy of Sciences

Department of Agricultural Terraforming

Research Division

 _..._

To: Winona M. Kirk

From: Christopher Pike

Subject: RE: Regarding your son, James

Sent: 2255.253, 0550 FST

 _Dear Winona,_

 _Sure thing. We can do away with the whole "Captain Pike" thing too._

 _Best,_

 _Chris_

Starfleet Command

San Francisco, CA

* * *

 _Caerus IX_

 _Stardate 2259.216_

The numbers before her blurred, and Winona blinked. She set down her datapad and rubbed her eyes, leaning away from her desk. There was a twinge between her shoulder blades from sitting hunched over for the last two hours. She stretched, then let herself hang over the back of the chair, listening to the satisfying crack of vertebrae righting themselves. The digits of the chronometer in the back corner of her desk—crowded with equipment and soil samples—glowed an eerie blue: 22:35. She was jet-lag exhausted and wide awake.

The insomnia was nothing she wasn't used to. It had plagued her since George's death, flaring up periodically like the depressive episodes. It was only in the last eight years, since she'd stopped pretending there was anything really tethering her to Earth anymore, that she'd begun finding ways to manage it. Coming to understand that she was a creature of habit had been the first step. Her body liked routines, even if she wasn't good at maintaining them.

The insomnia was also one of the many things she hadn't mentioned to Jim when he'd shown up in camp, hesitant and confused and still a little angry. It had actually gotten a little worse since then. She knew why. Knew the thought—that she'd traded Chris for Jim—was irrational, and that she needed to keep pushing it away. She knew better than to expect it to disappear anytime soon.

She now had a growing list in her head of _things to eventually tell/show Jim_. So far, it contained the following:

-Mental health…things

-Chris's letters

-Apology

She had no idea when she was going to find the time—or the balls, such as it was—to tell him. But then, it was obvious there were things he was keeping from her too. Their last comm call, just hours ago—

 _Kind of a shitshow of a morning, actually._

—had demonstrated that easily.

"Knock knock."

Winona turned to find Susan Xu, one of the aggies-in-training, standing in the doorway, smiling tiredly. When Winona met her gaze, Susan looked archly at her.

"You all right?" she asked. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."

Winona returned a gentle grimace. "Probably because I haven't."

"It's back?"

"It happens."

Step two of managing the insomnia: telling people about it so they understood when she acted like a walking corpse.

Susan leaned against the tent pole, crossing her arms. "Anything to do with your visitor?"

Winona hesitated before answering. "No, it just flares up from time to time."

If Susan was unconvinced she didn't let on. "Can I borrow your translator?" she asked.

"Sure. Help yourself." Winona gestured to the earpiece and collar mic on her desk.

Susan didn't move. "When do you need it back?"

"Probably not 'till tomorrow afternoon. Why?"

Susan glanced to her left, looking—Winona raised an eyebrow—downright sheepish. A telltale flush had begun to spread across her cheeks.

Winona sent her a wicked grin. "The new guy from Deep Space 2 or the Orion girl?"

Susan managed to recover, but only by the skin of her teeth. "You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine."

Winona snorted. "Mine was _not_ that kind of visit." She handed Susan the translator. "Have fun."

Halfway between mortified and grateful, Susan muttered her thanks and left. Winona turned back to her data analysis.

A few minutes passed in tired silence before a noise behind her made her turn again, grinning. "What, did you forget your—"

The words died in her throat.

The first thing she registered was the weapon: a small disruptor, not of any Federation make she'd ever seen. The second was the person holding it: tall and imposing, with a mane of dark, curly hair pulled away from a face with forbidding eyes, and a high forehead with an intricate cranial ridge. She was swathed in a loose, brown robe that obscured her frame, but Winona could see black body armor encircling her wrists.

Heart pounding, Winona drew a slow, controlled breath and raised her hands to the Klingon woman, palms out: the universal gesture of surrender.

 _Stay calm. In—one, two, three—out—one, two, three…_

Apparently, mindfulness techniques were just as useful in life-or-death situations as they were for crying uncontrollably under the bedclothes.

"I'm unarmed," Winona said, when she trusted herself to speak.

The Klingon regarded her with…Winona wasn't quite sure what. Interest? Suspicion? It struck Winona that she probably didn't understand her, and cursed herself for letting Susan borrow her translator.

But then the Klingon spoke in a low, accented alto: "Medicine."

Winona stared at her. "You speak Standard."

"Medicine," she repeated. "Where do you keep it?"

"In the first aid tent."

"Show me."

Winona frowned, scanning her from head to toe. "Are you hurt?"

"It is not for me." The Klingon jerked the disruptor to her right, twice.

 _Get up._

Winona let out another long, slow breath and complied, palms still up. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You are not a threat."

A part of her instinctively wanted to scoff at the assumption, except that it was probably accurate. The Klingon pulled up her hood so that her forehead and face were partially obscured. She fell into step beside Winona, gripping her upper arm with a surprisingly gentle touch.

 _Like a prom escort_ , Winona couldn't help thinking—were it not for the disruptor concealed in the woman's long sleeve, poking into her ribs.

Outside, another dust storm was building. The wind blasted across her face, sending flecks of dirt and sand whipping into her eyes. In the gathering gloom of night, she could just see it: a thin, brown line on the horizon. It would likely arrive in camp inside of an hour. For once Winona wished, futilely, that it would hurry up.

They walked at a pace just slower than normal, far too calm for anyone to notice something amiss, moving toward the first aid tent at the edge of the camp. As they did, Winona glanced hopefully to her right, heart pounding as she scanned the remaining tents for a body, a person. Far away, a tiny shadow was moving around the outside of the commissary tent: the taciturn Roylan scientist who had transferred to their project from the University of Mars. Winona hadn't yet been introduced—he worked with another team. Her heart leapt into her throat. If she called out to him—

Then the muzzle of the disruptor dug a little harder into her ribs, and her eyes snapped back ahead of her.

The first aid tent was empty, and Winona tried not to let her disappointment verge into the territory of despair. Surely someone was supposed to be on duty, on call? She'd never needed first aid supplies at this hour. Most everything she needed on a day-to-day basis she kept in the tent, within reach.

Her captor's eyes darted back and forth, scanning the shelves.

"What are you looking for?" Winona asked, her forced calm making her sound ridiculous, as if they were out grocery shopping.

In response, the Klingon merely picked up a standard kit and shoved it into Winona's arms. She examined each shelf, selecting an item from each and handing them over, all the while still pointing the disruptor neatly at Winona's head.

For a brief moment, Winona fantasized about throwing the supplies back at her and making a run for it. Even at point-blank range, she would still have the element of surprise…

"What is that?"

Snapped out of her thoughts, Winona looked up to see the Klingon pointing at one of the blue kits on the third shelf.

Winona glanced at it, read the label. "It's a dermal regenerator."

"Bring it."

* * *

The Klingon walked her into the desert, sand and dirt whipping into their faces, the dermal regenerator and medkit cumbersome under each arm. Not once did the Klingon look behind her. Winona wasn't sure how far they'd gone, but based on how long they walked, she could tell it was far enough that the research camp would have receded into the distance behind the growing sand dunes. The one time Winona dared glance back, she earned herself a jab in the ribs with the muzzle of the disruptor.

After interminable slow breaths, putting one foot in front of the other, Winona's arms were aching and the dust storm was so close it was getting hard to see. Just as she was wondering if the Klingon woman had led them to nothing, a shape loomed out of the hazy air. As they drew closer, Winona realized it was a small jumpship.

Without so much as a glance in Winona's direction, the Klingon woman flipped a protective cover off a panel on the side door and pressed her hand to a scanner. The hatch of a nearby door decompressed with a sharp hiss and lifted slowly to reveal a small, dark cabin.

" _Ow!"_

Winona yelped as the disruptor was prodded into her ribs again.

"Inside," the Klingon said tersely, and gave her a little shove.

Winona stumbled up the ramp and into the darkness, nearly tripping over her own feet as the hatch closed behind them. Her face flooded with angry heat, and she snapped before she could stop herself. "For fuck's sake _,_ I'm not going to run while you're pointing that at me, so you don't have to be so goddamn eager—"

She broke off. Dim lights had flickered on overhead, illuminating the dark cabin. They weren't alone.

Lying on the floor to Winona's right was another Klingon: a man, judging by his size and build. From the waist down, he was clad in the same dark body armor as the Klingon woman, but from the waist up he was naked, his shoulder and abdomen wrapped with some kind of odd, tight, purple under-garment.

The Klingon woman swept aside her brown robes and holstered the disruptor at her hip, then grabbed the medkit and dermal regenerator from Winona. She knelt beside the Klingon man and began to peel aside…

 _Oh._

Not an under-garment. A bandage. Soaked through.

This realization seemed to suck all the air out of the tiny cabin. Winona took a step back. She could hear the blare of red-alert klaxons, could feel the pinpricks of a sharp un-anesthetized pain in her lower abdomen.

 _We'll deliver in the shuttle—go!_

"Come here."

The command snapped her out of the memory. Winona found herself standing with one hand against the wall, sweat dripping down under her arms and the small of her back.

" _Come here_ ," her captor repeated.

Winona's feet seemed to move of their own accord.

The bandage was lying in a crumpled heap at the Klingon man's left hip. There were long, inflamed lacerations across his abdomen that didn't look remotely accidental, and above his hip, a deep gash that oozed a milky purplish liquid.

His eyes snapped open, an electric green that stood out against his dark skin. They were glassy and unfocused. He murmured something to the Klingon woman that Winona couldn't understand.

"Put your hand there." Winona's captor pointed to a spot to the left of the gash.

Winona placed her hands where she was told, and applied pressure. The man let out a sharp groan, and she jumped, shrinking away, but the woman caught her wrist.

"You stop when I say so," she growled.

Winona managed a nod, forcing her eyes to the opposite wall.

Her captor unzipped the medkit and held up a tool Winona didn't recognize. The Klingon man stared at it and spoke, and the Klingon woman applied it to the gash. The man tensed, but otherwise said nothing. Winona locked her arms in place.

They worked for what could have been minutes or hours. Periodically the man would mutter something, and the woman would glance down him, then nod and pick up a new tool. After the fourth or fifth time it happened, Winona realized he was feeding her instructions. Finally, when the woman removed the dermal regenerator from its kit and extended it over the man's abdomen, she turned to Winona, eyes flashing.

"Let go."

Winona removed her hands and stood slowly, knees aching, wrists and neck stiff. At her feet she found the discarded medkit. She located the pouch containing gauze and sanitary wipes and, with shaking hands, cleaned the blood off her fingers as best she could.

"Sit."

Winona turned. Her captor was pointing the disruptor at her again. They moved in tandem until they were standing against opposite walls of the cabin.

The storm was in high gear now. Even if she could figure out how to open the jumpship hatch herself, Winona didn't dare leave. She sat on the floor, her back to the wall. The Klingon woman sat across from her with the disruptor still in her hands, though now pointing it at the floor.

But for the sound of sand scraping across the viewscreen and hull, the cabin was silent-and cold. Winona rubbed her upper arms and tucked her knees to her chest. As she did, she darted a glance at the Klingon woman. Then her gaze shifted, her eyes falling on the Klingon man, prone and unconscious, the regen unit humming across his wounds.

She hesitated a moment before speaking. Her voice came out unexpectedly loud against the white noise of the storm outside. "Is he your…" she trailed off, searching for the right word. "…companion?"

The Klingon woman followed Winona's eyes briefly. "He is my first officer."

Winona raised her eyebrows. "So, you're a captain."

No reply.

"A captain in the imperial fleet?"

Silence.

Winona gestured at the disruptor. "You've clearly received weapons training, otherwise you wouldn't know how to use that thing. And you're obviously not squeamish about blood. Unless all Klingons are used to treating violent injuries."

She was fairly certain this went against every rule in the how-to-not-get-yourself-killed-in-a-hostage-situation book, but she couldn't seem to help it. It baffled her: she'd never been this chatty. Apparently where life and death were concerned, she was a nervous talker. (What was it the counselor had told her? _You never stop learning about yourself._ )

"My son is a captain," she said, when the Klingon again didn't reply. "In Starfleet."

That caught her attention. She looked up sharply, and Winona's heart skipped a beat.

"That's not a threat," she added quickly. "Just a fact. I'm just…making conversation. I'm surprised you speak Standard, actually."

The Klingon's mouth twisted in unmistakable annoyance. "There are humans who speak Klingon."

Winona raised an eyebrow. _Progress_. "Sure, I guess. Not many, though. It's not like we have much opportunity to talk."

At the back of the cabin, the Klingon man let out a low moan. The captain moved to check on him and the ship fell silent. After a few moments, Winona worked up the courage to speak again.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "On this side of the Neutral Zone, I mean. Are you defectors?"

"No."

"Well, I certainly hope you're not the invasion force, because no offense, but Starfleet isn't exactly gonna have a tough time of it with you two."

 _You are going to get yourself killed_.

Winona bit her tongue, forced herself to take a breath—but the Klingon woman showed no signs of anger. She didn't even look up from her first officer. Eventually she spoke: "We are not here to start a war with the Federation."

"Oh," Winona said. "Well. That's a relief."

The Klingon fell silent again. Just as Winona was about to ask what she and her XO _were_ there for, she turned around and regarded Winona appraisingly. "You require sleep."

A bitter laugh tumbled from her lips. "Don't I know it."

Her captor stared at her.

"Insomnia," Winona told her. When the Klingon continued to frown, she clarified: "I can't sleep. My brain won't let me. It's a stress thing. Do Klingons get insomnia?"

For a few long moments, the Klingon didn't say anything. Then she turned back to her first officer, retrieving the medkit from his side. "You require sleep," she said again.

She opened the kit and picked up a hypospray cartridge, one Winona knew was loaded with a standard sedative.

She felt a jolt of panic shoot through her core. Captive and awake was one thing. Captive and sedated was another. Even as her heart started to pound again, she knew there was nothing she could do to change what was about to happen. If this woman wanted to knock her out without a sleep aid, she could do it on a whim. If she wanted to kill her and abandon her body in the dust storm, she could do it just as easily.

Of course, she didn't have to make Winona break out in hives in the process.

"Use the other one. Please," she said, nodding to the medkit. "If you're gonna use that on me."

The Klingon blinked at her, then picked up the other hypospray cartridge from its slot next to the standard sedative. "This is the same. To make you sleep."

"I'm allergic to that particular chemical," Winona said. "My body—it reacts badly. I get hives. Um. They're…it's like a rash, on my skin. It's irritating and painful."

The Klingon woman stared at her for a moment, then picked up the alternative cartridge, loading a fresh hypospray. As she closed the space between them, Winona pushed back against the wall, shrinking into herself:

"To be honest, I'd really rather you didn't—"

There was a sharp pinch in the vein at the side of her throat.

"You need to sleep," the Klingon repeated, drifting back across the jump ship's tiny cabin.

Winona let out a long breath. The room was already growing fuzzy, the effects of the drug muddying the fear in her chest. She felt herself listing to her left, then a hand against her shoulder, lowering her gently to the floor.

* * *

The wind had stopped.

Winona realized it before she could crack her eyes open and push herself groggily upright, glancing around in confusion at her surroundings before catching sight of her captor in the cockpit and remembering the night before. Hearing movement, the Klingon woman turned. She had shed the coarse brown robe she'd been wearing before, in favor of simple, loose garments under the body armor Winona had seen shielding her wrists. The disruptor was holstered at her hip, on a belt also containing a ceramic knife and an empty pocket that might have held a comm. She met Winona's eyes directly before turning back to the cockpit.

"Shit," Winona muttered. There was a painful crick in her neck from having curled instinctively into the fetal position to keep warm. The Klingon man was still unconscious on the floor behind her, breathing slowly and raggedly but otherwise motionless.

Winona's eyes drew back to the cockpit view screen and she frowned. Something was off about the terrain. She couldn't put her finger on it. She shuffled forward, frowning, and sat in the copilot's seat.

"Where are we?" she asked.

The Klingon captain was tinkering on a datapad of sorts, deep in code. "Mars."

Winona blinked, then spluttered.

"When did—how long— _why are we on_ _Mars_?"

"Earth is too dangerous."

Oh. Of _course_. Because that made all the sense in the world.

"Too dangerous for what?" Winona demanded.

Predictably, she received no reply. After a few moments, the Klingon handed her the datapad. On the screen was a Standard keyboard, and a space for her to enter a signal for an audio call.

"Your son," the Klingon said, "the Starfleet captain. Contact him."

Winona felt something cold and heavy settle in her stomach. She met the woman's eyes.

"Am I your hostage now?" she asked.

The Klingon pulled up a map on the flight console, zooming in on a point and a set of numbers. "Send him these coordinates."

Winona mustered every ounce of fear and frustration and channeled it into the glare she shot back at her captor. "You still haven't told me what you want."

The Klingon stood, drawing the disruptor from its holster and pointing it at her.

Winona gripped the edges of the datapad so hard her knuckles went white. Better that then let the other woman see her hands shaking.

"He won't come for me," she ground out. "If you're looking to make some kind of trade. We're not close. We don't talk."

At least, not until recently.

"You will convince him," the Klingon said. Then she added: "You will not mention me."

"You expect me to drag him all the way out to Mars _without_ telling him I'm some crazy Klingon's hostage?" Winona demanded.

Her captor glared in reply.

Winona sucked in a deep breath. There were worse things than getting hurt, and there were worse things than getting killed. She set her jaw and glared back, ignoring the muzzle of the gun pointed in her face.

"I will not lure my son into a trap."

"I do not plan to harm him."

"Then what _do_ you plan to do?"

The Klingon opened her mouth, and—Winona stifled her surprise— _hesitated_. Encouraged, she leaned forward, refusing to break eye contact.

It was silent for a long time. Finally, her captor spoke.

"I need his help."

* * *

Jim woke up to a message on his comm from an unknown signal:

 _Pay your goddamn tab._

He stared fuzzily at it for a moment before realizing it had to be from Tells. It was another moment of wondering how Tells had gotten his comm signal and why she would be sending him terse demands via text message before he remembered what he'd been doing the night before.

That was when the headache hit.

"Fuck," Jim muttered, pressing the heel of his hand to his eyes. It felt like he'd had his head kicked in by a horse.

He debated pulling the covers back over his head and sleeping in until noon, then suppressed a groan and swung his legs off the edge of the bed. He'd never been one to lose daylight hours to sleep—at least, not willingly—and he wasn't about to change that now.

Downstairs, all was blissfully quiet. Jim shuffled into the kitchen, bypassing the fridge (the _idea_ of food was nauseating) and going straight for the cabinet above the sink, where he kept a simple first aid kit and a bottle of aspirin.

No aspirin.

Jim blinked at the empty space on the shelf, at the small hole in the layer of dust where the bottle had been sitting, untouched, for weeks.

Di Rezze couldn't be back yet, could he? No. He and the newly commissioned _Antares-A_ were on assignment through January; Jim _knew_ that. They'd talked about it in May. If the _Enterprise_ shipped out right after the rechristening, they were going to just miss each other.

Jim turned away from the cabinet. Coffee. Aspirin could wait if there was coffee. He turned to the coffee maker, and found the carafe missing.

Well, _that_ was just unfair.

Just as he was wondering if the universe was righting some unremembered karmic wrong he'd committed the night before, the gentle scrape of a chair leg on hardwood signaled movement behind him. Jim turned.

Bones was sitting at the dining room table, looking haggard—even more than the day before. In front of him on the table were the aspirin bottle, a tall glass of water, a mug, and the coffee carafe, full to the brim with dark liquid.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then Bones broke the silence.

"Please, for the love of god, don't say anything loud," he whispered.

Jim suppressed a laugh, which made his head pound even harder. He retrieved a glass of water and a mug of his own, and sat opposite Bones, who poured him a cup. They sat for a few minutes in fuzzy silence. Just as the pounding in Jim's head was starting to let up, realization swept through him and he laughed again.

"What?" Bones croaked.

"This is the most trashed I've been since before February."

Bones frowned at him.

Jim looked up and tried to channel Spock, forcing the smile off his face. "My first hangover. After death."

The words hung heavy in the air between them. Just as the silence was verging into uncomfortable territory, Bones snorted. Soon they were both wheezing with silent laughter.

"Jesus Christ," Bones managed finally, pressing his fingertips to his temples, "Only _you_ would find humor in this level of pain and suffering."

"Hey." Jim grinned, and raised his coffee cup. "Pain and suffering. Good for the soul. Isn't that what you always say?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Bones rolled his eyes but clinked his mug to Jim's anyways.

They were interrupted by the repetitive buzz of Jim's PADD, lying on the breakfast bar, accompanied by an unnecessarily shrieky classical ringtone. Both men winced.

Muttering an apology, Jim shuffled into the kitchen and picked up the PADD. Another unknown signal, sending an audio-only request. Tells again? Jim frowned, walking into the foyer with it. Tells would have to know better than to expect a response from either him or Bones after an evening like that.

If only to stop the noise, he hit _accept_.

"Hello?" he asked, and his voice came out hoarse and scratchy.

"Jim?"

Jim blinked. It wasn't his mother's signal, but it was unmistakably her voice. "Hi." He cleared his throat to disguise the hangover, then immediately felt ridiculous. If he wanted to indulge in a night out on the town, that was hardly her business. "What's up?"

"Is there any chance you could make it out to Mars today?"

"What's on Mars?"

"I am."

"What? Why are you—"

"Jim…"

Jim had heard that tone before, and it could mean nothing good. That tone had only ever preceded funerals and house calls from the Riverside Police Department.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Winona paused and sighed. "I don't want to alarm you."

"I'm alarmed. Just say it."

Winona took a deep breath. "Yesterday I was medically evacuated from Caerus IX."

"Wha— _Jesus Christ_ , why didn't you message me before?"

"I didn't have time, I…" she paused. "They're still determining what the problem is. I'm in a facility outside of New Sacramento—I can send you the coordinates."

"I'll be on the next shuttle." Jim's mouth pressed into a determined line. There was a shuttle that ran between San Francisco and New Sacramento every hour on the half. If he was out the door within the next twenty minutes he could catch the next one easily and be on Mars in no time. If they were still figuring out what the problem was, and she'd been able to wait a whole day to call, that clearly meant there was hope. Sure, it was a mystery, but mysteries could be solved and regularly were, if he had anything to say about it.

Then the question on the tip of his tongue— _how bad is it?_ —spilled out, and in reply he got a long, long silence.

"…It's pretty bad, Jim," Winona said, finally.

Right. He'd wasted enough time as it was.

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

* * *

As Jim's footsteps receded into the hall, McCoy pressed his fingertips to his temples again, letting his eyes fall shut. He'd made his fair share of poor decisions in his time. Romulan ale at four in the afternoon was probably up there in the top ten.

To be fair, he hadn't planned it. After the briefing, he'd made his way over to his office at Starfleet General to start educating himself on Klingon physiology and parsing what he could from the briefing file. The most he could make out was that it spread like Capellan Hemorrhagic Fever and acted like a super flu cocktail until you were delusional and then dead. As for the Klingon immune system: for what it was worth, the bulk of Federation medical research on Klingon anatomy might as well have just concluded that they had two legs, two arms, and looked more or less humanoid. Short of beating his head against the wall, McCoy had delayed the inevitable, settling for handing off his summer debrief paperwork to a pair of bright-eyed interns while he started the uphill battle of analyzing the footage from the _Eratosthenes_ , until suddenly it was three p.m. and he realized he'd worked straight through lunch. So he'd left his office, resolved to get the call he was dreading overwith before picking up a deli sandwich and heading back.

After the call, of course, he wasn't hungry.

Jocelyn hadn't been the worst part. Oh, she'd yelled at him—something furious and long-winded about _of all the inconsiderate bullshit_ and _I have a fucking career too, Leonard_ —but he'd had six years to get used to that, and he couldn't very well explain how there was most likely a plague of deadly, galaxy-destabilizing potential trickling into Federation Space from across the Neutral Zone. That was the thing about classified information: it was hard to appreciate until you were the one being sworn to secrecy.

No, the worst part had been Joanna, who had been at home at the time. When Jocelyn had let out a deep, frustrated sigh, pressed a slim hand to her forehead, and asked, "Well, do you want to talk to her, then?" McCoy's mouth had gone dry. He didn't really have much of a choice.

Afterward he could feel himself slipping. That was an awful feeling too, knowing he'd encountered the perfect storm of sleep-deprivation, guilt, and poorly-managed expectations to send him into a spiral, something he'd managed to avoid for over a year now.

Every stray noise and misplaced glint of light, every too-loud gaggle of pedestrians that passed him on the sidewalk had been intolerably irritating as he'd walked away from the Academy campus. He needed to be inside, somewhere quiet and dark where there weren't cheerful nineteen-year-olds knocking on his door every ten minutes asking where to find something or how they could help. Soon enough he'd found himself passing the alley where Mike's was—maybe his feet had carried him there of their own accord—and he'd stepped inside, where Tells had raised an eyebrow at him and asked if he wanted his usual. He'd been so grateful she hadn't said something like _haven't seen_ you _in here in awhile_ or _it's a bit early, isn't it?_ that he'd said yes without thinking.

An hour later he was responding to Jim's text, partly in need of a sympathetic ear, and partly because he knew deep down that to pull out of this he needed a kick in the ass, which Jim was more than capable of providing.

When it suited him, that was. Sometimes McCoy forgot how self-destructive Jim could be too. Stupid, really, given last February.

…Well, shit. That was a memory he had no desire to revisit, and yet there it was, right in front of him: the sound of unzipping his friend out of a body bag and surreal _wrongness_ of looking at his still corpse. It was followed closely by another, one that had taken place a scant few days later.

 _Chapel was standing next to him, the two of them staring at the console above Jim's biobed as test results came in, one after the other, all with the same conclusion: stable. They shared in a brief moment of celebration, Chapel letting out a quiet laugh and squeezing McCoy's arm before moving to log the results._

 _"You should go home and get some rest," he told her, when the task was finished._

 _Chapel nodded, a yawn on her lips. "What about you?"_

 _"I'll head out in a few minutes." He glanced briefly back at Jim before meeting Chapel's skeptical gaze. "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna sleep like the dead." He sat heavily in the chair next at Jim's bedside._

 _"I spoke with the on-duty nurse," Chapel said behind him, "She'll comm you if anything happens."_

 _McCoy nodded, turning to meet her eyes. "Thanks, Christine."_

 _"Night, Leonard."_

 _The door slid shut behind her and McCoy glanced back to Jim, listening to the slow, steady pulse of the heart monitor. He looked terrible, far worse than he'd looked sitting in the shuttle at the Riverside Shipyard, bruised and beaten and accepting a gulp of whiskey from McCoy's flask._

 _Through his exhaustion, McCoy felt a smile tug at his mouth. "Goddammit, Jim," he murmured. He shook his head and rested his forehead against his palm. There was a quiet chuckle in his throat, then suddenly there were tears blurring his vision. With no one else around to make uncomfortable, he let them slip through his fingers until they ran out._

 _He woke up the next morning to find himself slumped over in the same chair, his legs asleep, his head resting on his arm. Chapel was tapping him on the shoulder._

" _Well, you did sleep like the dead," she said dryly._

Jim picked that moment to reemerge, the PADD loose in his hand. McCoy only had to glance at his face to know something was wrong.

"I have to go to Mars," he said, without preamble.

McCoy sat up a little straighter. "What's on Mars?"

"My mom. She's been off-planet, but she was medically evacuated last night."

McCoy frowned. "With what?"

"They don't know. I have to go."

Jim looked numb, confused. It struck McCoy then that, for all his twenty-six years of Kirk family drama, of growing up in George's shadow, how little experience he must've had with this kind of thing.

There was no reason to assume Winona Kirk had contracted something fatal. Hell, there was no reason to assume _anything_. They had no information.

Then again, that also meant there was no reason not to think she might be dead within the hour, killed by some unknown disease agent picked up…

 _Picked up on the edge of the quadrant_.

McCoy's mind flicked uncomfortably to the briefing files.

"Jim," he said.

Jim glanced up.

"You're gonna be all right."

He pointedly didn't say Winona was going to be all right. That week alone, he'd made too many promises he couldn't keep.

"Yeah. Ok." Jim nodded. He didn't move, but stared at McCoy, the question on the tip of his tongue an obvious one. McCoy spoke before he could ask.

"Give me fifteen minutes."

They were out the door in ten.

* * *

 **A/N** : Content description: an original character (B) is shown to have sustained serious injuries, likely in a fight, which are described in semi-graphic detail. A second original character (A) is described treating those injuries. Character A is later shown sedating a third, non-original character (C), who is less than OK with it, though not with intent to do C bodily harm.

On an unrelated note: Bones's flashback also appears in my story "Patient Zero."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The domestic travel wing of the New Sacramento Interworld Transit Hub was nearly empty. Having fought his way through the crowds of travelers getting a head start on their weekend, Jim found himself standing in front of a single-lifeform transporter unit, inputting coordinates while Bones squinted at an adjacent map. They were in a wide, deserted hallway linking two main corridors, nondescript but for the modern art display overhead: a giant, red-orange hare, mid-leap, suspended by thin cables from the high ceiling.

Bones had told him once, during flight training at the Academy, that he had a strategy for shuttle travel. If he managed not to throw up or panic before they broke orbit, he was usually ok: it was the turbulence that normally did him in.

He hadn't thrown up during the trip to Mars. In fact, he'd hardly breathed a word of complaint, though he'd looked ashen and grim the entire time. Jim wasn't sure if that had made the flight more bearable or less.

"You all right?" Jim asked.

Bones looked over, still grim-faced but less pale and sweaty. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah." In theory. For now. Until he had a definitive reason not to be. He turned back to the transporter and finished inputting the coordinates Winona had sent him. "Ready?"

Bones frowned at the map again. "Are you sure those are right?"

"Positive." He'd all but memorized them during the shuttle ride.

"The map seems to be saying there's nothing there."

"Maybe it's a new facility."

Bones glanced at the transporter warily. "Maybe. But I'd rather not get beamed into the middle of nowhere and die in the lack of atmosphere."

A smile tugged at Jim's mouth. "Well, technically, that's not possible." He slapped the side of the transport unit, leaning against it.

Bones raised an eyebrow.

"They're programmed to screen coordinates for breathable atmosphere and solid ground," Jim said, "You can't give them a location that would beam you into space or, say, a hundred meters in the air. You'd get an error message." At that moment, the console where Jim had entered the coordinates glowed a bright green. "See? Safe."

"…Right." Bones was still eyeing the machine as if it had offered him something in exchange for his firstborn child.

Jim stepped into the unit. "Nobody ever told you that?"

Bones crossed his arms and huffed. "Oh right, because the _Enterprise_ transporter hasn't given me any reason to doubt havin' my molecules scattered across space and reassembled in an unknown location."

Jim managed a laugh. "See you on the other side." he said, and reached for the transport command.

When he rematerialized, it was to a sight that didn't make sense.

He wasn't standing in a bright, well-lit medical facility, or even a waiting room, but the cramped cabin of a tiny ship, the ceiling only a few feet above his head. Before him was a comm console, dimly lit and labeled in an alien language.

He glanced to his left and was startled by the sight of a body on the floor, breathing slowly and covered in regen equipment.

"Jim?"

The voice drew his gaze before the movement did. He turned to the cockpit of the ship, to a figure silhouetted against the bright viewport and the red sand outside.

" _Mom?"_

Winona Kirk darted forward, catching Jim's arms and pulling him away from the cockpit.

"What happened?" Jim demanded, "Are you all right?"

"I'm ok—"

"Why aren't you in the hospital?"

"Jim, I'm fine, but I need you to trust me right now."

In the wan light, Jim could see the look on her face just well enough to recognize it. He'd seen it before, over and over in the small kitchen of the farmhouse back in Riverside, starting with the day he'd driven the Corvette into the quarry at age eleven. Eyes wide and pleading, even as she demanded answers.

 _Why would you do something like this?_

 _Do you realize you have a permanent record now?_

And worst of all:

 _Why didn't you just_ say _something?_

Before he could respond, movement again pulled his gaze to the cockpit where a second silhouette had risen from its seat, and was stepping forward.

The extent of Jim's experience with Klingons had been on Kronos, but there wasn't a Starfleet officer alive who couldn't recognize one on sight. She was as tall as he was, dark-skinned, broad-shouldered. She stared at him, eyebrows arched in realization, before she spoke in Standard: "You are James T. Kirk."

Jim's eyes flashed to Winona. "What is this?"

She opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by the chimes of a second transport beam. Jim looked to where he'd been standing only moments before, to where golden rings had appeared in midair. Bones. _Fuck._

The second Bones materialized, he whirled around in confusion. " _Jim?"_

The Klingon took one sharp glance at him before her hand shot to her hip, pulling a disruptor from her belt like an old-fashioned quick draw. Jim moved instinctively, pushing Winona behind him and spreading his arms. Almost immediately Winona shoved back, trying to do the same thing.

"Mom—"

Bones spun between the Klingon on the floor and the Klingon holding the disruptor. "Jim, what in the _hell_ —"

"This is your son?" the Klingon holding the disruptor asked, fixing Jim with an appraising stare.

Winona's voice from behind him, steely and furious: "You got what you wanted—"

" _Stop._ " Jim cut her off, and the tiny cabin fell silent. Winona stopped trying to push in front of him.

The Klingon advanced a step. "You and your men led a raid on Kronos."

Jim returned both her stare and her tone. "Who are you?"

"Klingon patrolmen were killed."

In his periphery, Jim saw Bones step forward, saw the disruptor track to him instead.

"Now you listen," Bones spat, "that had nothing to do with you _or_ your people. And we weren't the ones doing the killing—"

" _Bones_ ," Jim said sharply.

Bones huffed angrily but said nothing.

"Who are you?" Jim repeated.

The Klingon was quiet for a long moment before she spoke again. "My name is Rllan. I am a merchant captain."

"What the hell do you want? What are you doing with my mom?"

"Jim," Winona said quietly, "I'm all right."

The Klingon's—Rllan's—dark eyes flicked over Jim's shoulder, then back to meet his gaze. Calculating. Then she let the disruptor drop to her side and holstered it. When she spoke next, it was with strength of conviction.

"Your Starfleet is looking for a missing Federation ship. A vessel of science. One that disappeared with a Klingon freighter two Terran weeks ago, stardate 2259.202. Earth hour 2201." She looked him squarely in the eye. "I know where to find them."

The cabin went silent.

Jim could sense Bones staring at him again—confirming Rllan's facts—and silently willed him not to.

Rllan looked between them and spoke again. "If you help me, I will help you."

"With what?"

"My crew. We were attacked; they were captured. I intend to get them back."

"Captured by whom?"

"They have been detained without trial in an imperial labor camp."

"Klingon authorities, then."

Rllan gave a terse nod.

"Why?"

"That is none of your concern."

"It is if you want my help."

There was little doubt in Jim's mind Rllan was telling the truth about the ships, or something close to it. The Klingons controlled their side of the Neutral Zone as tightly as the Federation did. There was no way she could know the exact stardate, the exact minute the _Eratosthenes_ had gone dark—or that it was a civilian research vessel—without somehow having gotten up close and personal with the ship and its data logs. She might as well have been quoting from the briefing file.

 _My crew is my family. Is there anything you would not do for your family?_

Even as Jim's mind raced, he flashed on the memory, the sound of Khan's voice through the force field of the _Enterprise_ brig, thick with grief and anger. Clearly Rllan knew what she wanted. And it wasn't as if Jim didn't understand that motivation—intimately. But he'd been fed that line before. And Khan's crew of frozen augments hadn't been in the custody of a potentially hostile interstellar power.

Rllan glared at him before speaking again. "The Klingon High Council considers us traitors."

"Are you?"

"If trying to smuggle medicines across the Neutral Zone makes us so, then yes."

A self-styled Robin Hood—or at least, she thought so. There was no way of knowing whether it was true.

"I need proof," Jim said finally. "That you've seen the ships."

Rllan stared at him again, then turned to the comm console and picked up a datapad.

"Your Federation ship was consumed by a plague," she said, nodding to the PADD as she handed it over. "That plague comes from Kronos."

On the screen before him was a short, official-looking document, partially redacted. It was entirely in Klingon. Jim looked up. "We can't read this without a translator."

"That is your weakness, not mine."

Jim's eyebrows shot up. "You aren't being particularly convincing right now."

Rllan let out a derisive snort. "You think that freighter was the only one?" she asked. "You have not seen Kronos. More will flee. The High Council will continue to block the border. And when their finest scientists fail to produce a cure, they will begin herding the sick onto freighters, and sending them across the Neutral Zone one by one, for your Starfleet to find. I am not the only one running out of time, James Kirk."

Jim waited a long moment before answering. He held up the PADD. "You contacted me with this," he said. "Think you could replicate the process?"

Rllan's eyes flicked down to the PADD, then back up to Jim. She nodded.

* * *

Uhura pulled her eyes away from the bright console and straightened in her rickety office chair, lacing her fingers and stretching her arms up above her head. Tucked into the corner of the building in the basement link between the xenolinguistics and xenosociology departments, Room 109 had been difficult, though not impossible, to find when she'd gone searching the previous morning. When she finally had found it, Professor Petterson's description of the office reshuffling had become quickly apparent. 109 was really more of a broom closet, containing a cramped desk that was too short for her legs, and a set of high closets that were stuffed to the brim with what, upon further inspection, seemed to be a small library of the entire department's teaching materials going all the way back to the mid-2230s.

It was also unusually warm. She'd made a stab at opening the set of windows that lined the top of the south wall, but quickly discovered that there was a force field just outside each one, presumably to discourage break-ins. She'd settled for putting in a maintenance request and shucking off her gray dress jacket, draping it over the back of her chair and sitting in her dark undershirt. To the right of the console, her tea was long cold.

As secluded as the space was, it had taken little time for Spock to find her. He had sent her a single message earlier in the day, asking if she required a midday meal—then a second, hours later. Never verbose when he could be succinct, two messages might as well have been twenty. Finally, late in the evening he'd appeared in the doorway, looking stiff and apprehensive.

"Nyota?"

Uhura had waited a long, angry minute before looking up. "Why did you lie to me?"

The look on his face—the fact that he didn't even look remotely surprised—was all the confirmation she had needed.

"I did not," he said after a moment's hesitation.

"A lie of omission is still a _lie_ , Spock," she snapped.

He paused again before continuing. "I was not contacted by anyone from the xenolinguistics department, as you asked. I was contacted by the Academy first-year dean. I merely responded to the questions he asked."

"And then you lied about it to me."

"I intended to tell you."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the thought surfaced that they'd hardly had time to talk, that she'd barely given him time to talk before dragging him into a hotel room. She pushed it down and looked back at her datapad.

"What was the briefing about?" she asked.

Spock was staring at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him silhouetted in the doorway.

"We have not been assigned a five-year mission," he had said finally. "Mr. Scott, Doctor McCoy, and I have been assigned a…" he paused, "…theoretical query to address. The contents are classified."

It shouldn't have made her angrier—being locked out of the briefing and Spock's dodging the truth were unrelated—but it did. She nodded shortly. "I got my faculty housing assignment today," she said. "I'm going to do some work here, and then pick my things up from the hotel."

"Nyota—"

It was too much, the sliver of pleading in his tone, just subtle enough that only she could notice it. Spock took a step forward and Uhura cut him off.

"I don't want to talk to you right now."

He stopped in his tracks.

"Please just go."

When she looked up next, he was gone.

She'd resisted the urge to pick up her PADD and call her sister, instead throwing herself into the materials the department had compiled for her, trying to make sense of Petterson's notes. Late that night after picking up her duffel—Spock was blissfully absent from the hotel room—she had settled into her faculty quarters, relieved to find the layout was different from Spock's old one. After a long, restless night, she'd returned to her tiny office and dived right back into her work.

A message notification buzzed on her PADD, flagged urgent. If she hadn't been looking at it, she might not have seen it at all.

Frowning, apprehensive, Uhura picked it up to find that it was from an unknown signal. Almost certainly spam, then. Her finger hovered over the _delete_ command, only stopping when she caught sight of the subject line:

 _2259.217_ , Unknown Signal

 _Uhura, this is Kirk. Need favor, ASAP. TAC._

Uhura blinked. _TAC. Treat as confidential._

 _Uhura, this is Kirk. Need favor, ASAP. TAC. Sending a document I need translated; your and my eyes only. Please confirm._

A second message appeared in the thread, just below the first, containing an encrypted file. Per shipboard protocol _,_ Uhura unlocked it with her officer clearance key and tabbed it open, staring at the contents. They were entirely in Klingon and neatly formatted, with a handful of sections, including all names, heavily redacted. The electronic seal in the right-hand corner of the message was the unmistakable symbol of the imperial government. Uhura felt her heartbeat tick up a notch. Though Kirk hadn't explicitly framed his message as an order, she felt compelled to treat it as one, no different than if she were sitting at her post on the bridge of the _Enterprise_. Quickly, she typed out a reply:

 _2259.217,_ Starfleet Academy

 _Received, Captain. Will do; please stand by._

Then she set about scanning through the document. She got just over two pages in before frowning, going back to the beginning, and scanning it again, and again, before she was absolutely certain of what she was looking at. Then she stood, retrieved a PADD loaded with information on Klingon politics from the over-laden shelf beside her desk, and sat back down, opening a document on her PADD and beginning to work. An hour later, eyes straining, she sent off the translation. All thoughts of Spock or her empty, matchbox bed in faculty housing had vanished from her mind.

* * *

 _ **Report to the Honorable Members of the Klingon High Council**_

 _ **Stardate 2259.**_ _ **174**_

 _After nine weeks of our confinement—to call it otherwise would be dishonest—we present to you a brief summary of our findings. Those few of you who care to gain a deeper understanding may read our previous reports and examine our data in more detail. All of it remains accessible on the server and backup drives._

 _The subjects we have studied vary in age, gender, and regional origin, but the progression of the disease appears roughly the same for all. There is an average six-day incubation period before subjects begin to present symptoms. The disease appears to be airborne, as well as communicated by touch, allowing for considerable spread before subjects can be quarantined._

 _Subjects first present with severe fever, body temperature ranging from 39.8 to 41.2 degrees Celsius. Aside from causing rapid dehydration, subjects experience extreme and persistent nausea and are unable to process ingested food. Subjects report complete muscular as well as mental fatigue, rendering most unable to move or walk._

 _An average of seven days after beginning to present symptoms, subjects begin to experience progressive blindness in both eyes. By Day 9, all subjects are completely blind. Following blindness, subjects begin to present signs of delirium, and are unable to identify or comprehend their surroundings or the current stardate._

 _No subjects have responded to any kind of treatment we have provided. Most, including one of our unfortunate colleagues, have died, and those that remain will likely join the others within days of our submitting this report. Our efforts to find an effective treatment have proven fruitless._

 _ **[redacted]**_

 _ **[redacted]**_

 _ **[redacted]**_

 _Given such circumstances we can think of no other solution than to recommend an immediate, planetwide evacuation of uninfected persons to unaffected colony worlds and settlements, and an immediate quarantine of all known infected persons. Such an effort will take considerable resources and present considerable risk to those involved._

 _We understand that the Council refuses to accept failure, but we are running out of time. The more time we spend looking for a cure that does not exist, the larger the threat to our way of life, and to the Klingon people. With the resources available to us, there is nothing more we can do._

 _We also understand the circumstances of our capture, and that likely by the time this report is circulated, both we and our Houses will have suffered the consequences of its publication. We accept those consequences. We ask the High Council to consider the following:_

 _It is admirable to live and die with honor, but the dead are dead, and the forgotten have none._

 _This report is hereby given by:_

 _ **[redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted],**_ _and_ _ **[redacted].**_

* * *

More than once, in the first few years following the attack on the _Kelvin_ , overly-pushy reporters had asked Winona what it had been like to find herself embroiled in the chaos of battle. She'd been in red-alert scenarios before, on the _Kelvin_ and in her training at the Academy, but nothing like that. Nothing like being aboard a ship being torn apart around you.

Before she'd started learning how to exercise her right to say no— _I don't have a comment for your two-bit op-ed blog, thank you very much_ —she'd told them, truthfully, that it had been surreal. At least at first. The first few seconds of the red alert klaxons, the command to report to battle stations, the first few blasts that ripped open the hull, had all led to the slow, halting realization of, _we are under attack. We are under attack, and my family is on board._

Later, of course, there was pain and terror and helplessness. But first there were the few moments of _knowing_ what was going on without feeling it.

This, Winona imagined, must be a little bit like that.

It was one thing to imagine disease outbreaks on the scale the Klingon—Rllan—described. It was another to try to conceive of them happening _now_ , and not all that far from home. Close enough, in fact, that they posed a real and present threat to Federation worlds. If she'd heard it from Rllan alone, Winona probably wouldn't have believed it. But Jim and his acerbic friend had clearly known what she was talking about.

After sending off Rllan's evidence—some inscrutable, official-looking document—to his Klingon expert back on Earth, Jim had explained it to her, filled in the blanks of the missing ships and his shitshow of a morning the previous day, and Rllan's comment, _I am not the only one running out of time._ And while her mind jumped from trying to grapple with the concept of potential galactic destruction in the form of Klingon plague ships to the rest of her family—Sam and Aurelan out on Deneva, far closer to the Neutral Zone than the Sol System—Winona realized that more than anything right now, she just felt drained.

Well. Drained and wired. And—she noted the layer of dust caked onto her skin and worked into her jeans—in need of a shower.

Sitting again with her back to the wall of the jumpship, Winona's eyes moved from one end of the tiny cabin to the other. All was quiet but for the whirring of a tricorder, wielded by Jim's friend, scanning the body of Rllan's still-unconscious first officer. It was obvious that aside from being irascible and obviously Southern, the friend had extensive medical training. He and Rllan had almost gotten into it again after Jim had sent off Rllan's document, the friend insisting that he be allowed to give Rllan's XO a once-over. Jim had convinced her, if barely, and the friend had set to work, changing bandages and rerunning the dermal regenerators over the Klingon's injuries in a manner that seemed targeted, professional.

Jim was pacing the tiny cabin with the datapad, periodically glancing at the screen as if he could start to understand Klingon by osmosis. Silhouetted in front of the sliver of rust-red landscape visible through the cockpit viewport, Rllan stood with her arms crossed over her chest, watching the room warily, the disruptor at her hip within easy reach.

 _Some merchant corps they must have_ , Winona thought.

A sigh to her left drew her gaze. Jim's friend, apparently finished with his final scan, was sitting back on his heels and stowing the tricorder in a small medkit. Jim appeared at his shoulder.

"How is he?" Jim asked.

"He'll live." The friend shot a pointed look back at Rllan. "But I could do better with a proper medical facility."

Rllan's dark eyes flicked briefly to Jim before she turned back to the cockpit.

"I don't think that's gonna happen, Bones," Jim said quietly.

"Bones" grumbled but said no more in protest. Instead, he turned abruptly to Winona. "What about you?"

Winona blinked. She'd already reassured Jim she was unharmed, more than once, explaining Rllan's appearance in the research tent before asking him for an explanation in turn. Surely Jim's friend had heard all of that.

"I'm fine," she said, automatically.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh. Let's try that again," he said. "When was the last time you ate?"

If there had been any doubt in Winona's mind before, it was gone now. He was definitely a doctor. Winona racked her brain, trying to account for lost time, but there was no way of knowing how long she'd been out after Rllan had sedated her.

"Not sure," she said, finally. "…I may be a little dehydrated."

Jim's friend nodded and pulled a small plastic bottle out of his bag. "Drink this."

Winona did as asked. When she tipped the bottle away from her face, he was holding out an energy bar, Starfleet standard issue. A colleague of Jim's, then, as well as a friend. Winona examined the label, then shook her head. "Can't."

There was the eyebrow again. "You need to eat something."

"No tree nuts," Winona explained with a rueful smile.

"So _that's_ where he gets it."

Winona followed the doctor's gaze to where Jim was standing, still frowning at the PADD while Rllan glowered out the viewport.

"We haven't met before," he said, turning back to Winona and extending a hand. "Leonard McCoy."

"Winona Kirk," Winona said, and shook it. "Can I ask you something?"

McCoy shot another glance over his shoulder. "Not like I've got any other way to make myself useful just yet. Unless his status changes." He nodded at Rllan's first officer. "Go ahead, Ms. Kirk." _Ms._ came out sounding like _miz_.

"Winona," she corrected, gently. "And don't take this the wrong way, but why did you come too?"

"Jim asked," McCoy said simply. "Well. Sort of." Winona stared at him, trying to get a read on what that meant. She must have looked as confused as she felt, because McCoy clarified: "I'm CMO of the _Enterprise_. Been crashing on Jim's couch the last couple of nights, seeing as I just got back to San Francisco and don't have a place set up. I was in the room when you called. Figured maybe I could be of some use, if not…" he trailed off with a barely-suppressed grimace. "…moral support."

There was no accusation in the doctor's eyes, but there didn't need to be. Winona felt her stomach clench.

McCoy gave her a sharp look. "Don't," he said. "Don't do that to yourself. You know as well as I do that you didn't have a choice." After a moment, he added quietly, "Jim knows that too."

Winona let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Besides," McCoy said, back to normal volume, "we've been in worse scrapes than this." Jim looked up from the PADD, and McCoy looked pointedly at him. "Ask him about Nibiru sometime."

Jim's eyebrows shot up, a vague smile quirking the corners of his mouth. "What about it, Bones?"

"Only everything, Jim."

Winona never got a chance to ask. A notification _pinged_ on the PADD and the smile disappeared from Jim's face as he pulled up the message. McCoy got quickly to his feet and Winona followed. As Jim read, his eyebrows knitted in concern. From the cockpit, Rllan watched, her expression unreadable. After a long minute, Jim handed the PADD over to McCoy. "What do you think?"

McCoy read over the document, more and more grim-faced, before he finally looked up. "It's identical," he said. "Far as I can tell, same symptoms, same progression, same apparent means of transmission…" He broke off, shaking his head. "If this is accurate…"

Jim nodded, and looked between McCoy and Winona, to Rllan's first officer. "Can he fly?"

McCoy's eyes snapped up, wide and incredulous. " _Can he fly?_ " he repeated. "You're not seriously considering what I think you are."

"We have to find those ships." Jim looked evenly back at him. "You know how Command's gonna react to this. It'll be a week at best before they get around to making a decision."

"God _dammit_ , Jim!" McCoy hissed. "This doesn't prove a damn thing, just that she knows about the outbreak. Well, good for her—"

"How would she even know to tell us about the ships? How would she know the exact stardate? The exact time?"

McCoy jerked a finger at Rllan, no longer pretending at discretion. "You can't trust her."

"I _don't_ ," Jim snapped. Silence fell between them. Then Jim lowered his voice again. "I trust Uhura."

McCoy glared at him for a moment before letting out a long sigh. "Yeah. Well. We'd be a couple of damn fools not to."

Winona looked between them, her heart beginning to pound. The issue couldn't be settled, not just like that. "Jim," she began, darting a glance at McCoy, "he's right. You can't know for sure."

"Mom—"

"You have no idea what you're walking into—"

" _Mom_."

Winona broke off. Jim was looking at her squarely in the eye, and it became clear he wasn't speaking to her as her son.

"I have to do this," he said. He glanced at McCoy. "Listen, there are shuttles back to Earth out of New Sacramento once an hour. You two go, and you're back before anybody knows you were gone. Bones, if Command starts asking questions you can cover for me."

From the arch of his eyebrows, Winona could see McCoy's answer coming a mile away. He was clearly skilled at many things, but subtlety was not one of them.

"Absolutely not," he snapped. "I'm coming."

"Bones—"

McCoy shot him a sharp glare. "I like how you think you have a choice in the matter."

Winona watched as Jim—who, in all her years of knowing him, had never once backed down from a fight—cracked a relenting smile. She realized then what she was seeing: a familiar, strange clockwork. Jim and McCoy had clearly had this exact argument, many, many times before.

Jim looked around the tiny cabin. "We're gonna need a bigger ship."

* * *

The truth was, Hikaru Sulu had been awake at four a.m. when his PADD had buzzed and Kirk's name had come up. He hadn't picked up because he'd been holding Demora in his arms, shushing and bobbing her up and down while she wailed like a banshee. Twenty minutes later he'd succeeded, if only barely, and had climbed back into bed where Ben was determinedly not awake. Sulu had curled an arm around his husband's waist with a tired smile and a murmur:

"Your turn next time."

Jim's call had to be Scotty's doing. They'd talked two weeks ago, the day before Demora came home from the hospital. Sulu and Ben had meant to hold onto the news just a little longer, before it could get to Ben's sister and Sulu's parents and the tidal wave of congratulations and advice and _I'll bet you haven't slept in a week_ could roll in and overwhelm them. But Scotty had called out of the blue just to say hi, and Sulu had been a bundle of nerves. "We just adopted a kid," he'd blurted out, and the engineer's eyebrows had shot to his receding hairline before he'd burst out laughing. "God bless, laddie," he'd said, "McCoy can finally get off his bloody high horse."

At some point or another, most of the shipboard gossip on the _Enterprise_ passed through Engineering. Scotty was the kind of man who delighted in knowing every scrap of it. It was only a matter of time before the news made its way to the rest of the bridge crew.

Sulu would have been annoyed with him if he wasn't so utterly, ridiculously _happy_.

Two days later, it was evening and Demora was fast asleep. Ben was at school, up against a grading deadline, and Sulu was at his desk in the office with a cup of decaf, composing a grocery list. Surprisingly, it wasn't baby supplies they needed—they'd cornered the market on diapers and formula—but grown-up food: oatmeal, eggs, green vegetables, maybe a jar or two of peanut butter. Staples. Or maybe it wasn't so surprising. After all, Ben prided himself on having been a boy scout, and yet he regularly forgot to make his own lunch, instead spending his time before school writing extra comments on his students' papers. _Be prepared_ indeed.

The doorbell rang.

Sulu winced, bracing for himself for renewed howls from the nursery as he got to his feet. Miraculously, they never came. He moved quickly into the hall—at least, as quickly as he could without making too much noise. He really needed to put a sign up: _Please. You're a good person. I promise I'll hear you coming, and if it's truly urgent, comm me, but for crying out loud, just_ knock.

Then the doorbell rang again, a second, resounding _ding-dong_ that seemed to echo straight down the hall.

For fuck's sake.

 _Dingdongdingdongdingdongdingdong_ —

Maybe this was what adulthood felt like: not the surreal joy of holding a fragile, beautiful new life in your arms, not the satisfaction of signing Starfleet parental leave forms for the next six months, but towering rage at whatever stupid kid was standing on his doorstep, and a healthy dose of residual guilt thinking about his younger self, who would've done _exactly_ this kind of thing for grins.

Sulu wrenched open the front door, prepared to deliver a righteous telling-off. His brain promptly stuttered to a halt.

"Kirk? Doctor McCoy?"

Both men looked easily as sleep-deprived as Sulu felt, and Sulu had seen himself in the mirror that morning, sunken-eyed and unshaven. Content, though. His exhaustion was for a good cause. Neither Kirk nor McCoy had that look.

"Hi," Kirk said. "Can we come in?"

Sulu raised his eyebrows. "If you're _quiet_ about it. Dem's sleeping."

McCoy shot Kirk a glare, and Kirk had the decency to at least look slightly guilty as they followed Sulu into the living room.

"What brings you guys to Mars?" he asked.

Kirk was all seriousness again: "You remember how I was the witness at your wedding?"

Sulu raised an eyebrow. Did he remember spur-of-the-moment proposing to Ben in his dorm room back at the Academy a week after the Battle of Vulcan, then cornering Kirk in the middle of the quad an hour later and dragging him to City Hall?

"Is that a question?" he asked.

"We need your help," Kirk said.

Sulu's eyes tracked from Kirk to McCoy. "Are you two—"

McCoy cut him off. " _No_."

"We need a ship," Kirk explained. "Warp capable. Today."

Sulu blinked, caught sight of the look on Kirk's face, then nodded.

"Where d'you need to go?"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 **Starfleet Headquarters**

 **Office of the Judge Advocate General**

Internal Investigation on Events of 2259.216 – 2259.222 involving USS _Enterprise_ crewmembers Capt. J. Kirk, First Officer S.T. Spock, Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy, Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott, Lt. N. Uhura, Lt. H. Sulu, and Ens. P. Chekov.

 _Requisition Files: Batch 15_

* * *

[2259.217, 1252 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Exchange between Lt. N. Uhura and Unknown Signal. Note1: speaker in this exchange identifies himself as Capt. J. Kirk, USS _Enterprise_. Note2: records demonstrate that Lt. Uhura's responses were voice-dictated while Capt. Kirk's responses were hand-typed. Exchange initiated by Unknown Signal.]

Uhura, this is Kirk

Need favor ASAP

TAC

Sending a document I need translated

Your and my eyes only

Please confirm receipt

[message attachment: PDF file]

[Lt. N. Uhura]: Received, Captain.

[Lt. N. Uhura]: Will do; please stand by.

...

[2259.217, 1348 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from Lt. N. Uhura to Unknown Signal]

[message attachment: text file]

Just sent the translation, Captain

[ _Note: let the record show a gap of four minutes between the receipt of the previous message and the following._ ]

Captain?

Please confirm receipt

Otherwise I can send again

[ _Note: let the record show a gap of fifteen minutes between receipt of the previous message and the following_.]

Captain, please confirm when possible

* * *

[2259.217, 1401 FST]

[Exchange between First Officer S.T. Spock, USS _Enterprise_ and [redacted Aide to Ambassador Sarek], Vulcan Embassy, San Francisco, CA [address of the Vulcan Embassy]. Note1: records indicate that [redacted] responses were voice-dictated, but First Officer Spock's were hand-typed. Exchange initiated by [redacted]. Note2: text translated from Vulcan to Earth Standard English by Starfleet Communications Lt. L. Kalomi.]

Spock, Son of Sarek: your presence is requested at the Vulcan Embassy, Conference Room 12, to discuss efforts to locate [redacted] and [redacted], and to remotely brief New Vulcan Defense Commission on potential risk to citizens of the Confederacy of Surak.

[First Officer Spock]: I am currently acting on orders from Starfleet Command to address the unknown location of [redacted] from a theoretical standpoint. This work is essential to the search effort. As an officer of Starfleet, I must first act on the commands of my superiors. I have received no orders to brief the New Vulcan Defense Commission, and suggest that your defense liaison contact [redacted] or [redacted] for further information.

...

[2259.217, 1408 FST, Starfleet Headquarters Intranet]

[Exchange between Adm. R. Barnett and First Officer S.T. Spock, USS _Enterprise_. Note: records indicate that both Adm. Barnett and First Officer Spock's responses were hand-typed. Exchange initiated by Adm. Barnett.]

Mr. Spock, apologies for the confusion with the Vulcan Embassy. There was a mix-up with my aide's account credentials this morning. You were supposed to hear from us before you heard from them. We would appreciate it if you spoke with the NVDC about present circumstances. They're ready for you now. Shouldn't take more than an hour of your time.

[First Officer Spock]: I see, Admiral. I request permission to comment freely.

Granted.

[First Officer Spock]: Sir, the task of briefing the New Vulcan Defense Commission about [redacted] is one easily relegated to one familiar with the situation whose expertise is not needed in locating [redacted]. It is my opinion that I would be of more use continuing the work I am doing without further interruption.

I understand. Unfortunately, the Embassy has requested your presence specifically. As you well know, we're trying to keep this thing under wraps, and as such we're required to proceed as delicately as possible, particularly as other Federation worlds become aware of the situation. Sooner or later, the newsfeeds are going to get ahold of this. We'd rather the NVDC heard it from someone they trust now than via the blind panic engine later.

[First Officer Spock]: Sir, I fail to see how my trustworthiness as a Starfleet officer should be any more or less meaningful than that of any other Starfleet officer whose expertise is not needed on this project.

Spock, I've obviously been unclear. That was an order. You are to report to the Vulcan Embassy within the hour and brief the NVDC, after which you may return to your work.

[First Officer Spock]: Understood, Admiral.

* * *

[2259.217, 1414 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from Lt. N. Uhura to Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy]

Hey there

Hope everything's going ok.

Seen Kirk lately?

Need to talk to him.

Time sensitive.

* * *

[2259.217, 1416 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Exchange between Lt. N. Uhura and Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott. Note: records demonstrate that both Lt. Uhura's and Lt. Cmdr. Scott's responses were voice-dictated. Exchange initiated by Lt. Uhura.]

Hey, Scotty

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Lassie!

Hi

Got a minute?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Lovely to hear your voice

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: metaphorically speaking, in any case

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: what can I do for you?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: you looking for Mr. Spock?

I was wondering

no

that's ok

thank you

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: ok

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: ?

I was wondering if you'd heard from Kirk lately.

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: no

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: not since yesterday at any rate

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: why?

He asked me to translate a document for him

Made it sound urgent

But I can't reach him now to confirm he got my answer

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Huh.

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: I imagine he's somewhere in the city

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Probably off brooding, really

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: He wasn't too happy about yesterday

Why, what happened?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Spock didn't mention it?

He's been

He's been a bit busy

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Well! Naturally! Couple of ships go missing on the yea end of the Neutral Zone like they bloody vanished into thin air, and before you can say Bob's your uncle, Command goes and pulls us off the bloody refit and puts us on finding 'em!

Wait, the Neutral Zone?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: oh aye

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: gets better too

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: couplea bloody plague ships

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: the Klingons must be pissed

hang on, hang on

the Klingons?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: uh

Scotty?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: bloody hell

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: fuck

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: I

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: I really shouldn't have said all that

Where are you?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Lass, I'm not kidding around

I think Kirk stumbled on something dangerous, and I think it has to do with the briefing.

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: what makes you think

I'll explain in person

where are you?

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: uh

Scotty.

[Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]: Transport studies sim lab, room 20.

don't move

be there in five

* * *

[2259.217, 1438 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Exchange between Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott and Ens. P. Chekov. Note: records demonstrate that both Lt. Cmdr. Scott's and Ens. Chekov's responses were voice-dictated. Exchange initiated by Lt. Cmdr. Scott.]

Lad

Forget the sandwiches

Something came up

Family emergency

Have to get the next shuttle to Aberdeen

Can't rightly say yet when I'll get back

I'm so sorry to rush out on you like this

Tell Mr. Spock, willye?

[Ens. P. Chekov]: Of course, Mr. Scott!

[Ens. P. Chekov]: I am sorry to hear that!

[Ens. P. Chekov]: What can I do?

[Ens. P. Chekov]: Is there something I can do?

[Ens. P. Chekov]: I will tell Mr. Spock right away

thanks lad

not much unfortunately

it's my brother

got a bit of a self-destructive streak

will keep you posted

send me any new info on the work, aye?

[Ens. P. Chekov]: Of course, sir!

[Ens. P. Chekov]: Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help!

...

[2259.217, 1440 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from Ens. P. Chekov to First Officer S.T. Spock]

Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott has just asked me to tell you

that he must go to Aberdeen because of a family emergency

He has departed immediately

I will be returning to the lab soon with sandwiches

I have told him we will attempt to help in any way we can

In the meantime, I have new theory.

When you return I am happy to run calculations.

* * *

[2259.217, 1511 FST, San Francisco Interworld Transit Hub]

[Message sent from Lt. N. Uhura to Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy]

Leonard, if you've seen Kirk, I really need to talk to him.

* * *

[2259.217, 1533 FST, Vulcan Embassy, San Francisco, CA]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Ens. P. Chekov]

Thank you for notifying me of Mr. Scott's status, Mr. Chekov.

I will arrive at the lab in approximately 19.4 minutes.

...

[2259.217, 1534 FST, Vulcan Embassy, San Francisco, CA]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott]

Mr. Scott, Mr. Chekov has informed me your presence is required in Aberdeen, Scotland due to a family emergency. Please confirm.

[ _Note: there is a three-minute gap between receipt of the previous message and the receipt of the following message._ ]

Mr. Scott, if you have received this message, please acknowledge receipt.

...

[2259.217, 1537 FST, San Francisco, CA]

[Recorded transmission between Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott and First Officer Spock, USS _Enterprise_. Exchange initiated by First Officer Spock]

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Hello?

[First Officer Spock]: Mr. Scott. Ensign Chekov has informed me you have left San Francisco in order to attend to a family emergency.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Ah—yes—that's right. Terribly sorry about that! It's the worst bloody timing.

[First Officer Spock]: If you require assistance of any kind, I would be…happy…to attempt to provide it.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Ah—uh—actually it's—it's just clearing up now. It was my brother Greg. He's a bit of a hot mess, y'know. Had a minor health scare, but it looks like he's all right now. Right as rain.

[First Officer Spock]: I see. Then I take it you will be returning to San Francisco shortly to continue our work?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Oh—I—uh, aye. Just, uh…gotta make my way to Heathrow.

[First Officer Spock]: I was given to understand your presence was required in Aberdeen.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Uh—

[First Officer Spock]: The Heathrow Interplanetary Transit Port is located in London, is it not?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Oh! Aye, uh—it is. Greg's actually in London, but Kath and Mum and Dad—they're all up near Aberdeen, and there's a wee bit of reassuring to do, y'know, what with Granny not being so mobile and all—

[First Officer Spock]: When should Mr. Chekov and I expect you to arrive?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Uh—uh—

[ _Note: let the record show that following this statement, the recording captures an unintelligible but likely pre-recorded voice in the background._ ]

[First Officer Spock]: …Mr. Scott, are you currently aboard a shuttle?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Sorry, sir, there's a bit of a bad connection in here.

[ _Note: let the record show that following this statement, the recording captures a loud hissing noise._ ]

[First Officer Spock]: Why are you exhaling into the comm speaker?

[ _Note: let the record show that following this statement, the recording captures a loud crackling noise._ ]

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Bad—signal—not—can't—ah—eh—

[First Officer Spock]: I do not understand your comments as the reliability of Earth networks and Sol System subspace arrays have long rendered the issue of a "bad signal" obsolete. Indeed, the phrase is now considered by most linguists to be archaic.

[First Officer Spock]: Mr. Scott?

[First Officer Spock]: Mr. Scott?

[End transmission]

* * *

[2259.217, 1554 FST, San Francisco-New Sacramento Shuttle Line]

[Subspace exchange between Lt. N. Uhura and Lt. H. Sulu. Note: records show that both Lt. Uhura's responses were hand-typed while Lt. Sulu's were voice-dictated. Exchange initiated by Lt. Uhura.]

Hey there

Hope you're doing well with the baby!

Quick question for you

Have you heard from Kirk lately?

[Lt. H. Sulu]: No, not lately.

How about McCoy?

[Lt. H. Sulu]: No. Why?

[Lt. H. Sulu]: Should I have?

Just trying to get in touch with them.

It's a time sensitive issue

Do you have a minute to talk?

[Lt. H. Sulu]: Sorry, I'm literally walking out the front door.

[Lt. H. Sulu]: Rain check?

Ok.

If you do hear from one or both of them, can you please let them know I'm trying to reach them?

[Lt. H. Sulu]: Sure

* * *

[2259.217, 1540 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. N. Uhura]

Lieutenant Uhura, I am writing to you in a professional capacity only. I ask that you read the message in full before dismissing its contents. Do you have any knowledge of Lt. Cmdr. Scott's whereabouts? He recently departed San Francisco, ostensibly to attend to a family matter in Aberdeen. The issue is now resolved, but his location is unknown. He is needed at Starfleet Headquarters.

...

[2259.217, 1552 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. N. Uhura]

Lieutenant Uhura, it has come to my attention that you and Mr. Scott spoke briefly within the last hour. I do not ask that you disclose details of your discussion, but I must insist that if you have knowledge of Mr. Scott's whereabouts, that you share it. Mr. Scott is currently engaged on a classified assignment with myself and Ensign Chekov. His presence at SFHQ is vital.

...

[2259.217, 1604 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. N. Uhura]

Lieutenant Uhura, I will ask plainly: are you and Mr. Scott currently aboard a shuttle en route to Mars?

...

[2259.217, 1605 FST, Starfleet Academy Intranet]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. N. Uhura]

Lieutenant?

...

[2259.217, 1632 FST, San Francisco Interworld Transit Hub]

[Message sent from First Officer S.T. Spock to Lt. N. Uhura]

Lieutenant Uhura, I do not know the nature of your and Mr. Scott's business on Mars, but Mr. Scott is needed at Starfleet Headquarters. Mr. Chekov and I are about to depart for New Sacramento, which we have postulated to be your intended destination. I assure you my business is entirely with Mr. Scott. My intent is not to make demands of you. If you prefer, we need not meet. Mr. Chekov and I will arrive in New Sacramento in approximately 118 minutes.

* * *

[2259.217, 1715 FST, New Sacramento Federation Settlement, Mars]

[Exchange between Capt. J. Kirk and Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy. Note: records demonstrate that both Capt. Kirk's and Lt. Cmdr. McCoy's responses were hand-typed. Exchange initiated by Lt. Cmdr. McCoy.]

How you doing?

This is Jim

[Capt. J. Kirk]: Fine

[Capt. J. Kirk]: Not dead yet

That's only kind of funny.

[Capt. J. Kirk]: Well, if you don't laugh…

[Capt. J. Kirk]: Injured party still unconscious

[Capt. J. Kirk]: R brooding

We're waiting on transport.

Once we're set and we get back to the ship, we'll beam you to New Sacramento.

To the shuttle port, I mean.

We'll have someone meet you there.

He'll know to look for you. He'll have a sign.

[Capt. J. Kirk]: How 21st century

[Capt. J. Kirk]: I still think this is a bad idea

Trust me, you're in good company.

[Capt. J. Kirk]: How's your friend?

A little grumpy but otherwise fine

[Capt. J. Kirk]: I didn't want to get him mixed up in all this

[Capt. J. Kirk]: I didn't want to get you mixed up in all this either

Trust me, he's choosing to get mixed up in all this

I am too

This is the job

Sometimes shit gets a little hairy

[Capt. J. Kirk]: I know

[ _Note: there is a six-minute gap between receipt of the previous message and receipt of the following message._ ]

I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.

I know you do.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

New Sacramento, Mars

2259.217, 1511 FST

It wasn't that Jim had his own special brand of insanity. It was that that insanity was easily transferrable to others. The realization had hit McCoy over the last twenty minutes, sitting on the L-shaped couch in Sulu's living room. He'd watched the young helmsman nod in response to Jim's explanation, like they weren't talking about breaking a decades-old border treaty to go in search of a pair of missing plague ships on the word of a touchy, close-lipped Klingon. And while McCoy knew he was no exception, _he'd_ at least made a stab at pointing that out before jumping in head first.

They'd left Jim's mother with Rllan in the tiny jumpship. Predictably, the Klingon had insisted on keeping a hostage. McCoy had protested that too, but had been neatly overruled. Which was a problem, because he _could_ on occasion out-stubborn Jim, particularly when he had Spock to back him up. Two Kirks at once, however, was just impossible.

"Small cargo tow rig," Sulu was explaining. "Mostly for milk runs to the outer rim, so it wouldn't be out of place. It can't outpace a starship, but it is warp capable and it'd fly under the radar. You said twenty people?"

Jim nodded. "Give or take."

 _If they're all still alive_ , McCoy's mind supplied, helpfully.

At that moment his comm chirped, and Jim glanced up. "Is that—?"

McCoy shook his head. Jim's counter to Rllan's insistence on keeping a hostage had been to leave Winona with Jim's comm—but this one wasn't from Winona. McCoy could see the signal ID from the preview. The entire message fit without him having to open the thread.

 _Leonard, if you've seen Kirk, I really need to talk to him._

"Uhura," he said. "Again."

Sulu raised his eyebrows. "Uhura's in on this too?"

"No—no." Jim shook his head. He glanced sidelong at McCoy before turning back to Sulu. "You're not either."

Sulu opened his mouth to protest, but Jim cut him off.

"I mean it. We dropped in for a surprise visit; you didn't know we were coming. You had to step out of the room for a few minutes, and we swiped your security clearance when you weren't looking. I'm not putting you in a position to get drummed out of the fleet."

"Or worse," McCoy added.

"Or worse," Jim agreed.

"Captain—"

"It's Jim right now, Sulu."

"If it's Jim, then it's also Hikaru," Sulu said, shortly. He looked between them, shaking his head, and letting out a breath. "And you don't understand. The security system scans the bio-signature of whoever's registered to fly."

"So, we bypass it. Make it look like a…" Jim paused, waving his hand vaguely in the air, "…hotwiring."

"Not with the kind of time you're talking about," Sulu shook his head. "It's not like a retinal scan to get the door open, it's…the ship is hardwired to the helm's bio-signature. You can't engage the engines, you can't input autopilot controls—you can't even lay in a course heading unless the command comes from a registered pilot. I can get you the ship, but I'm gonna have to fly it."

The room went quiet. McCoy glanced at Jim, who was focused on the coffee table, his head dipped in the beginnings of a nod.

"Also," Sulu said mildly, "due respect, but the extent of Doctor McCoy's combat training is stabbing people with hyposprays."

"Wha— _excuse me_?" McCoy spluttered. Jim raised his eyebrows at him, and he floundered for a retort, finally settling on the obvious. "Sulu, you have a _kid_ now!"

"Bones, _you_ have a kid," Jim said.

"And if all this gets back to the Sol System, she'll be in trouble too," Sulu said surely.

McCoy stared at them. "Dammit, Jim—"

"Sulu, where do we find this ship of yours?"

Sulu didn't get a chance to answer. With only the soft _beep_ of an accepted door code as prior warning, the front door nudged open and a man appeared, a backpack slung over one shoulder and a bag of groceries in the crook of his arm. He was tall and broad, and had the same tired look in his eyes as Sulu did, although he'd clearly shaved that morning in anticipation of leaving the house.

He stopped short, dark eyes widening slightly in surprise as he caught sight of the strangers in his living room. "Oh—hey there."

Across from them on the couch, Sulu had gone very still. When he spoke, the words came out stilted and needlessly formal. "Ben, this is Doctor Leonard McCoy. You remember Captain James Kirk."

Jim stood immediately and extended his hand. "Jim," he corrected with a quick smile.

Ben shifted the bag of groceries to his other arm. "Yeah, I remember. Nice to see you again."

"Doctor McCoy also works on the _Enterprise,_ " Sulu said. "Doctor, this is Ben, my husband."

"What brings you two to Mars?" Ben asked, casting a curious glance to his husband as he put down the bags.

Sulu stood up, and instantly McCoy felt like a trespasser.

"Ben, I need to talk to you," he said.

Ben glanced back at Jim, whose smile had begun to falter, then McCoy, now uncertain. "Ok…" He allowed Sulu to take him by the hand and lead him gently from the room.

In the impending silence, McCoy pinched the bridge of his nose. "I think we owe him a drink when this is over."

"Ben or Sulu?" Jim asked.

"Yes."

* * *

2259.217, 1755 FST

"When are ye gonna stop bein' mad at me?"

Slightly ahead, Scotty glanced archly back at her. Uhura didn't answer.

They had been walking for a good fifteen minutes. The closest tram stop had been several blocks to the north.

At first glance, the neighborhood reminded her of the suburbs north of the Academy campus in San Francisco. The streets were populated by small, single-story houses with squareish lawns, tire swings in the front yard, hovercar garages. But the resemblance was shattered by the fact that high above was the glass dome of the settlement, shielding the city from the Mars atmosphere. And between the skyscrapers on the horizon, Uhura could see rust-red gaps showing the dusty plains beyond the city grid. To say nothing of the fact that they still hadn't seen a single soul, not so much as a stray cat.

"I mean it," the engineer said, testily, as they crossed the quiet street. "If you're right and we're gettin' ourselves involved in something a wee bit dodgy, I'd like to be able to at least make pleasant conversation."

Uhura shot him a look. "Spock has messaged me four times since we left Earth."

"Well, you're the one who insisted on barging into the lab and demanding answers. It's not my fault we both got picked up on the cameras."

She stared at him. "You tried to fake subspace interference using a _candy bar wrapper_."

"Hey!" Scotty scowled, raising both hands in protest. "I never said I was a good actor, all right? If you're so smooth, why don't _you_ just take one of his bloody calls and come up with a decent story. Besides," he added in a mutter, "I needed the blood sugar."

Before Uhura could decide whether to dignify that with a response, Scotty stopped short, putting his hands on his hips and whirling in a circle. "Where the hell are we?"

There was a street sign three meters away.

"Tyson and Marcia," Uhura read.

Scotty blinked. "Oh." He pointed to the house kitty-corner from them. "That's it there."

Uhura followed him across the street. Sulu's house was much the same as the others around it: single-story, unassuming, painted a light shade of yellow. Neatly-kept plant beds framed a small porch, with an old-fashioned, dark blue hinge-door.

"Knock," Uhura said, when Scotty reached for the doorbell. "The baby, remember?"

"Ah, right."

Scotty knocked. A moment later, the door swung open.

"Oh," said Jim Kirk.

He looked no better for the wear than Scotty had, when Uhura had arrived in the lab. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair looked like it hadn't seen a comb in at least twenty-four hours. He was wearing civvies, and the same tee-shirt he'd been wearing the other night at dinner.

He was also holding a tote bag by the strap: something quilted, light purple, and paisley. A baby bottle was tucked into an elastic pouch on one end, full of sloshing, off-white formula.

Uhura crossed her arms over her chest.

Kirk shifted slightly, then asked, "How long did it take you guys to find us?"

"Once Scotty was able to trace your and Doctor McCoy's PADD signals?" Uhura asked, arching a dark eyebrow. "Five minutes."

Kirk nodded. "That's a little bit illegal."

"Hypocrisy is unbecoming, _Captain_."

Behind Kirk from somewhere in the house there came a familiar set of footsteps. Sure enough, a moment later Leonard McCoy appeared out of an adjacent hallway. He looked surprised for all of half a second before his expression promptly turned murderous. It was mismatched with the baby nestled in the crook of his arm, burbling cheerfully to herself.

"Oh, well this is just dandy," McCoy growled.

"Lovely tae see you too, Doctor," Scotty said, pushing past Jim and walking straight over to McCoy and the baby. "Hello, wee lassie! I'm your Uncle Monty." The baby grabbed at Scotty's index finger and he beamed, then turned around to face the room, addressing Jim:

"So. What's all this about a Klingon plague, and where are we going?"

"Scotty—" Jim began.

"Nice try," Uhura broke in. "Clearly you've involved Sulu, who has more reason than any of us to stay out of it. And you involved me when you sent me that document. You're not getting rid of us."

Kirk huffed. "At least let me explain what you're getting into."

Uhura sat neatly on the L-shaped couch. "Please."

* * *

"So," Winona began, her voice ringing in the quiet cabin, "this prison camp."

She was leaning against the jumpship wall. She'd grown tired of sitting and her ass was sore. From the cockpit, Rllan turned and glanced back at her.

They had a plan for _her_ , Winona knew. Someone was helping Jim and McCoy get a ship. They would then make their way back to the jumpship, move Rllan's first officer, and beam Winona out to the shuttle port to rendezvous with a friend. Jim had been intentionally vague about that, trying—Winona imagined—to keep as many specific names out of the comm threads as possible.

But beyond her own involvement, she was in the dark.

"What's your plan for rescuing your crewmates?"

As expected, Rllan turned back to the viewport without a word.

"Come on, we're on a first-name basis now, even if you did kidnap me. …Or is Rllan your family name?"

No answer.

Winona looked back down at Jim's PADD, to his last two lines in their conversation thread before he'd gone dark again:

 _I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. I know you do._

Her reply was sitting just underneath in a pale green speech bubble, unread:

 _It's ok_

It had taken her a moment to realize that she really meant it.

"The less you know, the less they can ask." It was the first time Rllan had spoken in nearly an hour.

Winona blinked. "What?"

Rllan gave her a look like she was a particularly dull child. "The less you know, the less they can ask."

"Trust you to be a mystery wrapped inside an enigma."

Rllan raised an eyebrow.

"It means—you're just—" Winona broke off. "Listen…I don't expect you to understand this, but I don't have much family. I didn't lie to you before—Jim and I really aren't close. Until a few weeks ago, we hadn't talked in…" she counted silently. The number seemed absurd when she said it out loud. "…eight years. He just showed up out of nowhere. Not for any reason I could make out, anyways." She gave a humorless laugh. "I wasn't the best mom."

Sensing she was starting to ramble, Winona trailed off, but when she looked up again, Rllan was watching her from the cockpit. "We had this mutual friend. Guy named Chris. He died last February, in an attack on a Starfleet facility by the man Jim and his crew were looking for when they went to Kronos."

There was a flash of recognition in Rllan's eyes.

"I think maybe that changed things for Jim. Chris dying, I mean," Winona said, then stopped again. She hadn't yet voiced that theory out loud, not even to herself. "Jim's smart. I know all parents say that about their kids—or humans, anyways—but I've seen his aptitude scores. The thing is, sometimes that doesn't matter. Sometimes the situation…" In her mind's eye, she could see crumbling support beams and flashes of red, blue, and yellow as crewmembers scrambled left and right. Medical white, flanking her. Gray-brown smoke and flashes of electrical fire.

 _Sometimes shit gets a little hairy._

Jim's PADD dinged, displaying a message notification from "Bones":

 _En route. ETA 10 minutes._

Winona glanced up again to find Rllan looking at her quizzically.

"They'll be here soon," she said. She paused, thinking over Rllan's words: _they less you know, they less they ask._ She parroted the Klingon's words back to her. "Who's 'they'?"

"Starfleet. The Federation," Rllan clarified. "This is against their rules."

Winona snorted. "Breaking a border treaty to organize a prison break that'll piss off a potentially hostile interstellar power? Yeah, I would think so."

Rllan chose not to react to that. "The less you know, the less they ask," she repeated.

Winona blinked as the significance started to sink in. "So there is a plan."

Rllan turned back to the viewport.

* * *

New Sacramento Interworld Transit Hub, Domestic Travel Wing

2259.217, 1844 FST

"I have seen this before."

Spock turned to see that Ensign Chekov had stopped nearly three meters behind him. He was staring open-mouthed at the high ceiling, at an art installation hung high above their heads: a Terran feral rabbit, mid-leap, red-orange in color. An intriguing piece to be sure, not quite abstract yet neither fully realistic, the rabbit's body all sharp, flat planes, and devoid of such details as eyes, teeth or whiskers.

Spock pushed down his impatience. "Mr. Chekov, I require your attention on the matter at hand."

Chekov's gaze snapped back down to eye-level. "Yes—sorry, sir."

All Academy simulation rooms were equipped with cameras, which researchers could elect to use for record-keeping purposes. After his bizarre comm exchange with Mr. Scott, Spock and Chekov had checked Room 20's footage to see if it would offer any clues about the engineer's disappearance. Reviewing the video from approximately 1200 to 1215 hours had revealed little, only showing Mr. Scott moving between the holo table and the console he'd been using to input calculations.

At 1216 FST, however, he had begun communicating with someone on his PADD: a brief, voice-dictated conversation, during which he appeared to become initially agitated, then deeply concerned.

At 1222 FST, Nyota had entered the lab.

Watching her converse with Mr. Scott was an exercise in frustration. Nyota had been standing with her back to the camera, her expression and movements unseen. The only clue as to the matter of their conversation was Mr. Scott's obvious discomfort, both hands raised as Nyota approached him, holding out her PADD. The engineer's unease seemed to turn quickly to intrigue, and then concern, as he held out his own PADD for Nyota to read over. Then they were both looking at something on Scott's console screen.

Running some sort of test? Tracing a signal? It was impossible to know.

At 1236 FST, they had left the lab together. Minutes after that, Chekov had returned with takeaway sandwiches and coffee.

After reviewing the footage, Chekov had offered, with only the slightest hesitation, to trace Mr. Scott's comm signal. Spock had weighed the urgency of their work against the obvious ethical problem before deciding that anything significant enough to prompt the engineer to leave so abruptly—and conceal his whereabouts—merited the intrusion.

The trace had revealed Mr. Scott to be in space flight, leaving Earth's orbit. From there, based on his trajectory, it was short work to determine his probable destination. Though the largest and most frequently visited Mars settlement was not New Sacramento but Schiaparelli, the timing of the call and Mr. Scott's coordinates at that moment suggested he was headed for the former. The _where_ was now immaterial. The remaining question was _why_.

 _The game_ , his mother would have said dryly, _is afoot._

"Have you been able to retrace the signal?" Spock asked.

Chekov was frowning at his PADD, tapping the screen. "Yes, but—" he broke off.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Ensign?"

"He appears to be in transit, sir."

"Perhaps on a rail line?"

"He is outside city limits. If I had to guess, I would say he was in a ship."

Spock stepped over to examine the PADD screen. The blue dot representing Scott's signal was traveling rapidly over uninhabited terrain. Then, without warning, it slowed and stopped in an unknown location. His mother's voice again: _in the middle of nowhere._

Chekov frowned. "There's nothing there."

"As far as we know, Mr. Chekov."

"Are we going there?"

Spock calculated the risks. Individual transporters were programmed to screen coordinates for safety factors, but there was nevertheless a nonzero percentage of irreversible transport accidents, to say nothing of the fact that they would be beaming into an unknown situation.

 _I'm familiar with your compulsion to follow the rules._

The thought caught him off-guard. Jim's words from just before the attack on the Daystrom Center: spoken in anger, and later taken back in regret. He'd accepted Jim's apology, though his words had stuck with him.

It seemed to Spock that he had, over the course of his life, broken many rules. Largely unspoken ones, beginning—at least according to some—with his very existence. Standing next to Jim, it made sense that his own rebellions—choosing Starfleet, living unbonded—would go unnoticed by their colleagues and superiors. And unlike Jim, he took little pleasure in defiance. It drew unwanted attention.

Jim would likely relish this: the conundrum, the pursuit of answers, the potential danger.

It then struck Spock that he hadn't heard from Jim since the briefing, which seemed…unusual.

Before he could pursue that particular line of thought, the warning chimes of a transport beam sounded behind him. Spock turned to see one of the individual units lit up bright green, a figure materializing inside.

Moments later a human stepped out. Her clothing—light, informal—suggested outdoor work, perhaps some type of labor or agriculture research. She was likely of middle-age, judging by the lines on her face. Her hair, bound in a loose ponytail at the base of her skull, was a color Spock had heard referred to as "dirty blonde." It was also dirty in the literal sense: the woman was covered from head to toe in a fine layer of dust.

She turned to Spock and blinked. "…Are you here for me?"

Spock exchanged a look with Chekov, then turned back to her. "We are not."

The woman drew herself up, consciously straightening her spine. "Have you seen anyone else around? With a sign? Winona Kirk."

Out of the corner of his eye, Spock saw Chekov twitch.

 _Ah._

"We have not," Spock said. "Please excuse us, Ms. Kirk."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Good lord, when the man comes through, he _comes through_ ," Scotty was saying. He was standing in front of a wall console, poring over the cargo ship's specs, grinning like it was Christmas. The ship was larger than a standard passenger shuttle, but uncomfortable inside: designed for low-warp capability. State-of-the-art, as Scotty had pointed out on the way back to Rllan's jumpship.

Jim answered with a brief smile as he passed the engineer on his way to the cockpit. For all Bones's grumbling about adrenaline junkies and Jim's latent insanity, it was Scotty who'd hopped in a jumpship and stowed away on the _Vengeance_ when he had absolutely no reason to do so, who'd tested out trans-warp beaming with Jim and nearly wound up in a water turbine. Who'd stood dripping on the _Enterprise_ bridge and crowed, _I like this ship! It's exciting!_ In retrospect, Jim shouldn't have been at all surprised that Scotty would find his way into the mess eventually.

In the cockpit, Sulu was sitting at the helm console.

"How long do you think we have before they notice the ship's gone?" Jim asked.

"If we're lucky?" Sulu asked. "I'd say twenty-four hours at most. This ship isn't scheduled for a run until next week, but they do periodic system checks."

Right. "Are you gonna be ok when we get back?" He was talking about Ben. Jim had met the man only once, over a year ago at San Francisco City Hall when Sulu had recruited him to witness their wedding. Though Ben hadn't said anything on his way out the door—he and Sulu had agreed to go get Ben's sister to help watch Demora—his expression had been a mix of confused, unhappy, and resigned.

Sulu interpreted Jim's question differently. "I'm counting on the grace of the Admiralty," he said dryly. "And the good word of my commanding officer."

It was hard to manage a smile at that, but Jim did. "Well, you've got it." He headed back into the cabin, continuing past Uhura and Scotty into the cargo bay.

In the cargo bay, Bones and Rllan were kneeling on the floor, securing Rllan's first officer—Vattha, Jim had since learned—who was lying on a hover-stretcher.

"How we doing?" he asked.

"Again," Bones grumbled, tugging on a strap that was looped through one of the stretcher's handles and a slat in the floor, "it'd be better if he was in an actual hospital and not a cargo hold on a ship that's more'n likely to be in a damn firefight in the next twenty-four hours. It'll do, though," he conceded in a mutter.

"This gonna work?" Jim asked Rllan. "The ship?"

"Yes," Rllan replied, without looking up.

"Seating might be a little tight."

"It is likely many of my crew are already dead." Rllan fell silent.

Bones looked up at him over his shoulder.

"Right," Jim said. "Let's get going, then."

He stepped back through the cargo bay doors, but didn't emerge into the cabin.

 _Spock was looking down at him through the glass. His limbs were heavy, sluggish. He thought distantly that it was a little like when he'd been a kid, when he'd wake up a few seconds before the rest of his body and find himself momentarily unable to move. It was always a little scary, the temporary loss of fine motor control, but then he'd wake up fully and everything would be fine. No such consolation now._

How's our ship? _he heard himself ask._

Out of danger.

 _Over Spock's shoulder, he could see Scotty's fuzzy outline, had the presence of mind to realize with a jolt that unless Scotty moved closer, he'd already seen his face for the last time. He wasn't ready for that. Not yet. Not now._

 _Spock was crying. That scared him more than anything. He said so. Then:_

Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel?

"Captain?"

Jim drew breath, the weight in his limbs gone as his eyes refocused on the cabin of the cargo ship. He felt lightheaded.

"Captain?"

Uhura was sitting in one of the passenger seats, her PADD in one hand. She looked strangely young to him. Part of it was her clothing. She and Scotty had exchanged their dress grays for outfits that were half-replicated, half-borrowed from Sulu and Ben. Uhura was swimming in her tee-shirt and jacket. She didn't look like herself.

" _Kirk._ "

Jim realized abruptly that he hadn't answered yet. "Yes—Uhura. What is it?"

Uhura was staring at him. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"You look like someone just walked over your grave."

"I'm _fine_." It came out sharper than he intended. "Just…haven't eaten in awhile." It was a poor excuse for snapping, but he realized it was true. The last food he could remember having was beer snacks at Mike's the night before.

"Energy bars in the emergency kit," Sulu called from the cockpit.

Uhura was still staring at him, and Scotty was looking at him too, now. Momentary relief washed through him: he could see the engineer's face.

It faded quickly.

Jim took a breath. "Ok. Everyone, listen up." He glanced to his left, where Bones and Rllan had appeared in the cargo bay entrance. "You all know what we're doing. We're gonna get your crew back. We're gonna find those ships. When we get back to Earth, I will do everything I can to vouch for all of you, but I can't guarantee what will happen. This is a voluntary mission. Anybody who wants off, now's your chance."

No one spoke.

Jim nodded. "Ok. Let's get out of here. Rllan, I need you to navigate."

Wordlessly, the Klingon started toward the cockpit. Bones turned back into the cargo bay, Uhura to her PADD, and Scotty to the wall console. As Rllan assumed the navigator's seat next to Sulu and started laying in coordinates, Jim heard Scotty's voice behind him:

"Jim?"

"Be right there," Jim said.

"I'm just—I'm gettin' an odd reading here…"

"Two seconds, Scotty—"

"Kirk!" Uhura barked.

Jim turned. In the starboard aft corner of the cabin was a small transport pad. It was lit up bright yellow, and the warning chimes had already started.

 _Shit._

A figure began to materialize: dress grays and a dark, severe bowl cut. Another item on the growing list of things he really should have been expecting.

"Spock," Jim said.

His first officer stepped off the transport pad and looked left and right, surveying the cabin. "Jim," he replied. "…Nyota. Mr. Scott. Mr. Sulu." His eyes shifted and must have fallen on Rllan, but he made no comment. After a moment's silence, he turned back to Jim. "What is this craft?"

"It's a small cargo shuttle," Jim replied. "Tow rig."

Spock nodded. "Are you commandeering this vessel?" he asked.

Jim suppressed a wave of irritation. Trust Spock to jump to the simplest, most reductive question right off the bat. "Spock—" he began, but a second transport beam cut him off. This time Chekov stepped out, wide-eyed and frazzled, and Jim didn't even want to _know_ how he'd gotten dragged into this.

"Keptin!" the navigator exclaimed.

"Jim," Spock repeated. "Are you commandeering this vessel?"

Jim paused. "Yes."

Spock arched an eyebrow at him. "Why?"

"We know where the missing ships are."

"If this is true, then why have you not reported their location to Starfleet?"

"We're being taken there in exchange for our help."

Spock's eyes darted to Rllan again. "With what?"

"A rescue mission."

Spock looked at him askance. There it was: the eyebrow twitch of imminent disagreement. "Where, precisely?"

There was no good way to spin the answer to that question, so Jim just said it: "Klingon space."

The words hung in the air for a moment. Spock stared at him. When he spoke, it was in cautious tones. "Jim, need I remind you that should you go forward with this course of action, you would be in violation of at least seven Federation laws—"

"I don't need a lecture on interstellar treaties; I'm aware of the risks—"

"If you were to bring this information to Starfleet, I am certain—"

"Oh, _come on,_ Spock!" Jim burst out. He could feel his hackles rising. After Nibiru, after Admiral Marcus, after _everything_ they'd been through, they were still having this argument. "We don't have time to get the runaround from Command; it'll be a day at least before we even get an answer—"

Spock talked over him. "I am _certain_ that Admirals Barnett and Archer would agree to contact the USS _Helena_ to—"

"Would you let me finish?" Jim demanded. For all his precious logic, Spock wasn't immune to the debate strategy of _I'm-talking-louder-than-you-therefore-I-am-right_.

Apparently not.

"I cannot condone this course of action," Spock said, his voice ringing with finality. Before Jim could answer— _I'm not asking you to_ —he had turned to Chekov. "Mr. Chekov, you will send out a distress beacon to our location immediately."

"Chekov, belay that," Jim said sharply.

Chekov froze. His eyes flicked between them like a deer in headlights.

"Mr. Chekov," Spock repeated, "Starfleet code mandates that if a commanding officer has engaged in activity that is illegal or unnecessarily endangers the lives of his crew, junior officers are permitted to take command in his stead."

"Chekov, stay where you are."

"Spock." Uhura had appeared at Jim's side. Her voice was quiet.

Spock glanced at her, his eyes lingering for a moment before he turned back to Jim. "Captain, if you will not willingly surrender this craft I will have to take measures to ensure that you do."

Jim felt himself tense. He could count on one hand the times he'd been in a physical altercation with Spock, and neither had ended well for him. This was the last way he wanted to do this. Next to him, he could feel Uhura holding her breath.

The hypospray came out of nowhere.

For a split second, Spock looked genuinely surprised. He batted at his neck, whirling around to see his attacker. "Doctor—" he broke off, swaying dangerously. Then his knees buckled under him.

Bones caught Spock under his arms, sagging immediately under the dead weight. " _Help_ ," he grunted. Jim darted forward at the same time Uhura did, each taking an arm and lowering the first officer carefully to the floor.

"How long is he gonna be out?" Jim asked.

"Stuff's practically horse tranquilizer," Bones muttered. "For him, though? I'd give it an hour, tops."

Jim let out a breath, then pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go," he told Sulu, who was standing frozen in the entry of the cockpit.

Over his shoulder, he heard Bones huff out a breath and grumble to the helmsman:

"It's ok, Sulu. You can say it."

* * *

[2259.217, 2105 FST, [Commercial Shipping Company] Intranet, New Sacramento, Mars]

[Exchange between "TheDreadNed" (N. Schaeffer) and "MLocatis" (M. Locatis), [Commercial Shipping Company] Records and Inventory. Exchange initiated by "TheDreadNed".]

Hey, L. Got a second?

[MLocatis]: I'm on my break.

Need a sanity check

Ship registry is telling me Craft 17 is out of dock, but the schedule says its next milk run is a week from now.

[MLocatis]: Probably a system glitch.

[MLocatis]: Can it wait?

would feel better if we checked now

its driving me nuts

I'll make it up to you

Orion barbecue?

[MLocatis]: …ok

[MLocatis]: Skip the fried eyeballs

Thanks

Appreciate it

Seriously, I know this is a pain in the ass

[MLocatis]: It's ok

[MLocatis]: Used to work as a Starfleet recruiter

[MLocatis]: Had to deal with this kind of thing all the time

Didn't know you were a fleetie

[MLocatis]: I wasn't. I did civilian liaison stuff in the southeastern US

[MLocatis]: You would not believe the kind of inefficient bullshit that happens trying to organize crewmember registration files.

[MLocatis]: Can move starships across galaxies in the blink of an eye, but trying to find the most recent physical for Bobby K. from Bumfuck, Mississippi…

Hah

[2259.217, 2009 FST, [Commercial Shipping Company] Intranet, New Sacramento, Mars]

[Exchange between "TheDreadNed" (N. Schaeffer) and "MLocatis" (M. Locatis), [Commercial Shipping Company] Records and Inventory. Exchange initiated by "MLocatis".]

Ned, are you sure 17 isn't supposed to be out on a run?

[TheDreadNed]: Positive.

And you're sure it's supposed to be in Hangar 2?

[TheDreadNed]: Where else would it be?

Check again.

[TheDreadNed]: I'm positive

Just do it

[TheDreadNed]: C'mon, L I know this shit like the back of my own hand

[TheDreadNed]: 11-20 are housed in Hangar 2

Well, I'm looking at the fucking bay and I don't see it

[TheDreadNed]: What?

It's not there

Did anybody sign it out?

Did Ta'el change the schedule?

[2259.217, 2011 FST, [Commercial Shipping Company] Intranet, New Sacramento, Mars]

[Exchange between "TheDreadNed" (N. Schaeffer) and "MLocatis" (M. Locatis), [Commercial Shipping Company] Records and Inventory. Exchange initiated by "TheDreadNed".]

Ta'el says schedule hasn't changed

checking the latest sign-outs

Jesus, somebody did

[MLocatis]: What's the ID?

"H. Sulu."

should we be reporting this?

[MLocatis]: what the fuck do you think?


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

 **Starfleet Headquarters**

 **Office of the Judge Advocate General**

Internal Investigation on Events of 2259.216 – 2259.222 involving USS _Enterprise_ crewmembers Capt. J. Kirk, First Officer S.T. Spock, Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy, Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott, Lt. N. Uhura, Lt. H. Sulu, and Ens. P. Chekov, first in [redacted] and subsequently in [redacted].

 _Requisition Files: Batch 8_

[Testimony from Cmdr. S'chn T'gai Spock, First Officer, USS _Enterprise_ , pp. 16-17]

[JAG Representative]: If you would, Commander, please describe the circumstances of your arrival on Mars on 2259.217.

[First Officer Spock]: Forgive me, counselor, but I do not understand the purpose of this query. I have already relayed this information in my official report.

[JAG Representative]: We're fuzzy on a few details between San Fran and New Sacramento.

[First Officer Spock]: If you have read the report, then you are aware I have provided exact times and details of my departure from Earth and arrival on Mars.

[JAG Representative]: We've read the report, Mr. Spock, and we'd appreciate it if you would keep the backtalk to a minimum and just answer the questions.

[First Officer Spock]: …Very well.

[JAG Representative]: You say you and Ensign Chekov were able to locate Craft 17 by tracing Lieutenant Commander Scott's comm signal to Mars coordinates [redacted]?

[First Officer Spock]: That is correct.

[JAG Representative]: And you made use of the New Sacramento ITS individual transporters to beam yourselves there?

[First Officer Spock]: That is also correct.

[JAG Representative]: Once you were onboard, you encountered Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura, and Lieutenant Sulu, yes?

[First Officer Spock]: Affirmative.

[JAG Representative]: And, given the chance to explain themselves, you determined that their plan—to rescue this Klingon woman's crew in the hope that she would divulge information about the _Eratosthenes_ —was a solid one.

[First Officer Spock]: If I am correctly interpreting the idiomatic phrase "a solid one" to mean "well-reasoned and risk-appropriate," then yes. I did make such a determination.

[JAG Representative]: …Forgive me, Mr. Spock, but where impropriety is concerned, your record as a Starfleet officer is all but flawless. I think those of us who remember the Nibiru incident can attest to that. You claim that you happened upon your commanding officer, CMO, Chief Engineer, a communications lieutenant, and a helmsman in the process of commandeering a commercial vessel in order to travel _into Klingon space_ and complete an unauthorized and highly dangerous extraction of non-Federation citizens—all on the word of someone they had met just a few hours prior. I fail to understand what they could have possibly said that would have been so persuasive.

[First Officer Spock]: I was convinced by their…logic.

* * *

He had been too focused on Jim. That had been the problem.

Jim had clearly been steeling himself for a fight, shoulders tensing, mouth pressed into a thin line. This demonstrated a characteristic lack of reasoning on his part: as both of them well knew, the last and only time they had had a physical altercation, Jim had nearly suffocated. Spock had been too fixated on the memory to be watching Nyota. To see her dark eyes flick to the side of his head, just for a split second.

The hypospray had startled him. He had turned to find Doctor McCoy standing there, looking—of all things—regretful.

That should have been evident, Spock thought fuzzily.

Then his vision had blurred, and he had sunk into nothing, likely the result of a class four medical sedative.

All this—his analysis—swept through Spock's mind before he opened his eyes.

He was lying in a supported fetal position on cold metal: the floor of a small craft, judging by the stiffness in his joints and neck. He pressed his palm to the floor and started to push himself upright.

"Easy. That stuff wasn't your standard sleeping pill."

The voice came from above him and to his left; he identified it immediately as Doctor McCoy's. Spock didn't answer.

"Jim," McCoy called.

Sitting up and glancing to his right, Spock saw first he was in an empty cargo bay, and second that he was not the only passenger who had been unconscious. A male Klingon—obviously wounded—was strapped to a stretcher that was secured to the floor. The slight tremor under his fingertips and the low engine hum were enough to tell him they were at warp.

Jim appeared in his periphery and sat, cross-legged, next to him. He was holding a PADD. Spock mirrored him. The sedative was still in his system; he didn't yet trust himself to be able to stand.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Ninety minutes out of the Sol System at warp five," Jim said. "En route to Klingon space." He looked archly at Spock. "Are you gonna try to take me out again?"

"As it would seem I am at a tactical disadvantage, logically, no." He glanced up at McCoy, who huffed a sigh and walked away.

"Good," Jim said, mildly.

Spock arched an eyebrow. "Hardly. Jim, you have violated a dozen Starfleet regulations, and no fewer than seven Federation laws."

Jim nodded. "Yep. Probably."

" _Precisely_." Jim's expression—unconcerned but also vaguely impatient—suggested he did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions. "You will likely face court martial upon your return. So will Doctor McCoy, Engineer Scott, Lieutenant Sulu, and—" he ignored the twist in his stomach at the next name, "—Lieutenant Uhura. I cannot sanction this course of action."

"You done?" Jim asked.

Spock stared at him. "…Yes."

Jim nodded again. "You gonna give me a chance to explain?"

Spock glanced to the doorway through which McCoy had disappeared, and recognized the main cabin where he had entered the craft. "As it appears I have no choice in the matter…"

Jim unlocked his PADD and handed it over. A text document filled the screen, formal. Spock recognized the insignia of the Klingon Empire in the top right-hand corner.

"What is this?" he asked.

"It's a report to the Klingon High Council about the disease outbreak on Kronos," Jim explained. "Same disease as the _Eratosthenes_ reported when they ran into that imperial freighter."

Spock took a closer look at the document. "This is in Standard," he said.

"Uhura translated."

Spock looked up at him.

Jim shrugged. "We needed it translated."

Spock scanned the document. He refused to label the content as "disturbing"—Vulcans did not become "disturbed"—but it did begin to shed a light on the urgency of Jim's departure, and Mr. Scott's willingness to abandon his post.

As Jim had summarized, it was a combined findings report and formal policy recommendation to the Klingon High Council, heavily redacted, outlining the progression and symptoms of the disease and recommending that the Council implement procedures for wide-scale quarantine and evacuation. The descriptions of the disease indeed matched those present in the _Eratosthenes_ briefing file to a degree that—accounting for differences between Terran and Klingon physiology—was enough to convince Spock the two outbreaks were one and the same.

While the _Eratosthenes_ data more than implied the plague's origin was the Klingon homeworld, the report in front of him suggested an outbreak of a much larger scale. The fact that Starfleet Communications had little to no intelligence on the matter was troubling.

More so, however, was the way the report deviated in the last short paragraphs. The way it became obvious the researchers were being held captive: the reference to "consequences to ourselves and to our Houses," and the last resigned plea to the Council to accept their conclusions and recommendations. The reference to death with honor. Were he to postulate, Spock would not have guessed any of the nine redacted names signed at the bottom of the report were still living.

He looked up and handed the PADD back to Jim, who accepted it and pointed to the cockpit through the open doorway into the main cabin. Spock could only see a sliver of the two individuals seated inside. One was plainly Mr. Sulu, piloting the craft. The other was the Klingon woman he'd seen upon beaming in, seated at the navigation console.

"That's Rllan," Jim said. "She's a Klingon merchant captain. She knows where the ships are. She says her crew's been captured and detained by Klingon authorities, and that in exchange for our help freeing them, she'll take us to the missing ships."

"She provided you with this document?" Spock asked.

"Yeah. And before you tell me it's insufficient proof, she quoted the time of the _Eratosthenes'_ last transmission to me, so I'm pretty damn convinced."

Spock closed his mouth—Jim had plainly anticipated his arguments—then opened it again. "How did you come into contact with her?"

Jim shook his head. "It's a long story."

He flashed on the memory of Winona Kirk in the New Sacramento ITS, stepping out of the individual transporter looking puzzled and in need of rest. "I take it your mother was involved."

Jim frowned. "Yeah. How do you know that?"

A third voice joined them, heavily accented and apologetic. "We ran into her in the interworld transit hub," said Ensign Chekov, appearing at Jim's elbow. He looked at Spock: "I am sorry, Commander. The keptin's argument was very convincing."

Spock looked between the two men, attempting to determine a proper response. Jim's argument _was_ convincing. As it often turned out to be, despite initial overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He let out a breath. "Your apology is unnecessary, Ensign."

Although he did not smile, Jim seemed to brighten, sitting up marginally straighter. "You'll help us, then?"

Spock clarified: "I will need to understand the details of your plan, Jim. …But yes, I will help you."

He followed Jim and Ensign Chekov into the main cabin, and was confronted with three pairs of eyes, all tracking to him at once: Doctor McCoy, looking characteristically irritated, Mr. Scott, who had the grace to look vaguely guilty, and Nyota.

Nyota met his eyes, her expression unreadable. Not for the first time, Spock found himself lost for words, felt an unexpected lurch in the pit of his stomach. Less than twenty-four hours ago he'd experienced her quiet, simmering anger in the xenolinguistics department basement, but somehow, this seemed worse.

Spock looked away. He needed to focus.

"Rllan," Jim called.

The Klingon turned from the navigation console and cast Spock a decidedly suspicious look. When she spoke, it was with a surprising command of Terran Standard. "You were on Kronos as well," she said.

Spock blinked and glanced at Jim, but Jim was looking back at Rllan, exasperated, as if they were repeating a familiar argument.

"Yeah, and so was Uhura." Jim crossed his arms. "You done being pissed about that? We need to hear your plan."

Rllan did not reply, but moved into the center of the cabin, placing a PADD on the floor, and drawing up a three-dimensional map of Klingon space. She zoomed in on a star system roughly halfway between Kronos and the Neutral Zone border, centering on a small, class K planet and straightening up. The others crowded around the map, observing, Nyota and Mr. Scott just visible through a swirling cluster of asteroids.

"It is called Rura Penthe," Rllan said.

"A prison planet?" Spock asked.

Rllan looked up. "A labor camp," she clarified. "Prisoners work in the dilithium mines."

"So we have to get underground." Doctor McCoy was circling the map from the other side of the room, coming to stand next to Jim. "I don't suppose we can just knock on the front door."

"That is indeed unlikely, Doctor," Spock agreed, ignoring McCoy's less-than-subtle eye roll.

"They do not guard the surface," Rllan said. "Nothing can survive there. There is a magnetic disruption shield around the prison. Beaming in or out is impossible."

"Is there any way to disable that? Or get outside it?" Jim asked.

"The average surface temperature is minus 58 degrees Celsius. Before you reached the edge of the shield you would be dead."

"How do you intend to enter and leave the camp?" Spock asked.

"There is a supply shuttle every two days. We will use that."

"You mean we'll hijack it," said McCoy.

Rllan looked at him, and the doctor shrugged. "Let's call a spade a spade."

Jim was nodding. "We'll find your crew, leave on the same craft, and get the hell out of dodge. And then you'll take us to the ships."

"Yes," Rllan repeated. "Then I will take you to the ships."

Spock frowned, looking between Jim and the Klingon captain, waiting for someone to request further detail. When no one did, he turned to Rllan. "You have not seen the interior of the facility," he prompted.

"No."

"Then you did not escape from Rura Penthe itself."

The Klingon regarded him for a moment before answering, as if his words were a challenge. "When we were captured, my senior officers and I were separated from the rest of our crew. My first officer and I escaped; the others were killed. The rest of my crew was on a different ship."

Spock turned to Jim. "This introduces an element of uncertainty into this plan, Captain."

"Not captain right now, Spock. And I'm aware of that," Jim said, studying the map. "We'll just have to be stealthy."

Spock frowned and pressed on. "Such a plan will likely necessitate interaction with individuals inside the labor camp. Guards and other prisoners."

"Worried about your street cred?" Jim asked dryly.

Spock had to pause for a moment to remember the meaning of the phrase. "If by 'street cred,' you are referring to our ability to successfully blend in, then yes."

Jim's knowing look faded as he glanced Spock over. "Yeah, we are gonna have to figure something out about that," he admitted. He thought for a moment, then glanced back at the cockpit: "Sulu, what kind of replicating ability does this ship have?"

"Nothing Mr. Scott can't work with!" Sulu called back.

"All right," Jim said. He turned back, a vague smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Spock, how's your acting?"

Spock raised an eyebrow.

* * *

There were a pile of tags on the seat opposite her, and beside them, the thermal emergency coats they had been torn out of. One of the ship's two stun-only phasers was holstered to her hip; the other, at Kirk's insistence, was in Spock's possession.

Uhura was sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, her PADD balancing on her thigh as, for the umpteenth time, she read over the original report Kirk had sent her.

As Sulu had piloted them closer and closer to the Neutral Zone, then through it and into Klingon space, everyone else had prepared for the away mission, amassing gear and the little weaponry available to them in the emergency stores. (To no one's surprise, Rllan was already armed.) Collectively it had been determined that Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Rllan would be the landing party: although combat-trained, Sulu needed to stay with the ship, in case something went wrong. Now they were just out of scanning range of Rura Penthe, watching for Rllan's supply shuttle.

Uhura wasn't about to let herself dwell on the fact that the whole thing felt improvised and last-minute, even if it was. For the time being, there was nothing to do but wait, and so she was reading over the report again, trying to parse the meaning behind some of the information. There was a greater context that seemed to be missing: between the descriptions of symptoms and failed treatments, the scientists seemed to reference the origin point of the plague as a mining town in one of the northern provinces, but the exact location was redacted, along with a significant chunk of text that followed.

She was so engrossed that it took her a moment to notice Spock had sat down next to her—and another to look up and register that it wasn't Spock at all, but McCoy, wearing Spock's dress grays.

Uhura blinked at him. "Uh…"

McCoy glanced down at himself, then let out a sigh. "Believe me, I'm not happy about it either. But he can't look like Starfleet and we're about the same size." He put Spock's folded-up jacket on the empty seat to his right.

Uhura felt an unexpected smile tug at her mouth, and decided not to resist it. "Not cold?"

"Yeah, well." McCoy crossed his arms. "I'm a doctor, not a prom date."

"I'm surprised he's not after your head for knocking him out with that hypo."

"Maybe you can convince him it was for his own good."

Uhura felt her smile fade. "I doubt that very much," she muttered.

There was a brief pause. McCoy glanced sidelong at her.

She hesitated for a moment before saying, "Things have been a little rocky lately."

"I did wonder, but I figured you'd mention it if you wanted to."

"I'm surprised Kirk could resist the gossip."

McCoy shrugged. "I think he's had other things on his mind."

"Apparently." She remembered how the captain had stopped in the cargo bay entrance, blank and unfocused, just moments before Spock and Chekov had beamed in.

McCoy shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. When he spoke, he sounded repentant, and Uhura realized she'd sounded more annoyed than she'd meant to.

"Sorry for keeping you in the dark," he said. "We really should have guessed you'd make your way out here once we sent you the report." He glanced at the PADD. "Speaking of, you look like you've got a bee in your bonnet."

"It's just…" Uhura frowned. "Where did she get this?"

McCoy shook his head. "Not sure. She just had it. I imagine she swiped it when she escaped."

"It's a classified government document."

"She seems to be pretty savvy."

"Hm." Uhura glanced over the last lines of the report again. "It's just…disturbing, for what we know about the Klingons. They don't usually do this to their own. The secrecy, I mean. Most everything seems to be done in the open."

"It's barbaric, is what it is," McCoy muttered.

"Desperate times," Uhura offered.

"How convenient."

Before either of them could say more, they were interrupted by a call from the other side of the cabin: "Bones." Uhura glanced up to see Kirk standing in the cargo bay entrance, waving McCoy over.

"Excuse me," the doctor said quietly.

As McCoy walked away, movement drew Uhura's eye to the other side of the craft, to the tiny broom closet of a head, where Spock was emerging into the main cabin. Uhura had to suppress the slight chuckle that pushed up from the bottom of her chest. While she'd seen him in civilian clothing before, Spock looked decidedly out of place in jeans and a tee-shirt. Then he turned to the cabin, and the faint bubble of mirth that had settled in her stomach dissipated, replaced with a chill.

While determining who would be on the away team, there had been some debate about the likelihood of running across Vulcans in prison.

" _There are Vulcan prisons," Spock pointed out. "Crime is relatively low among the Vulcan population, but it is hardly nonexistent."_

 _McCoy scoffed. "Maybe for filing your taxes incorrectly."_

" _Being too effusive in public. Indecent exposure," Scotty supplied._

" _Not really the kind of thing that'd get you thrown in a labor camp, Spock," Kirk pointed out._

" _What if you were a member of the v'tosh katur?" Uhura asked._

 _It was the first thing she'd said directly to him since he'd awakened. Spock's eyebrow shot up, and everyone else turned to look at her._

" _V'tosh katur?" Kirk repeated._

" _It's a group of Vulcan…dissidents," she began, choosing her words carefully. "They reject the philosophy of Surak and seek meaning in emotion rather than logic. They tend to get labeled as…thrill-seekers. Adrenaline junkies. It could fit."_

 _The room was quiet for a moment. Then Spock answered: "While that is a reasonable conclusion, based on what is known of the v'tosh katur, I would be concerned about my ability to 'sell the part.'"_

 _For a moment, no one said anything. Then—_

" _I have an idea."_

 _Uhura turned with the others to see Sulu leaning against the entrance of the cockpit._

" _What if you didn't have to be a Vulcan?"_

The ink was temporary, generated based on a formula Scotty had coded into the replicator, and although the tattoos bore the imperfections of being hand-drawn in the mirror, they were geometric and precise: jet black, arcing from the base of his jaw to the edge of his eyes, disappearing from the bridge of his nose into his bangs.

Unlike on Romulus, among Vulcans, the practice of inscribing tattoos of mourning had largely died out during the Enlightenment. Still, there were—had been—some groups that had maintained it. Spock did not come from one of those communities, but looking at him now, he could have. The tattoos were utterly his, and yet Uhura knew who he'd been picturing when he'd drawn them.

At that moment, Spock's eyes flicked over to meet hers, and Uhura was unable to keep the expression of surprise and fear off her face. A current of shame followed in the pit of her stomach, and she looked away before he could have a chance to react.

* * *

"I have to tell you something, and you have to promise not to freak out."

Standing in the cargo bay, well away from the door to the main cabin, Jim watched as Bones's eyebrows shot up his forehead, and realized he probably should've led with something a little less dramatic. Jim suppressed a wince. Too late.

Bones crossed his arms. "Please. Continue putting my fears to rest."

Jim took a breath, then let it out. So far, he'd managed to maintain a decent poker face, all the way through convincing Spock, refining Rllan's plan, and helping Scotty and Chekov modify the replicator and prep disguises. But once they'd finished, the mission had turned into a waiting game, and he'd found himself unable to keep the memory out of his head. He needed to tell someone, before it became a problem.

"Right before we left Mars," he began, "there was this moment where I sort of…remembered the warp core."

Bones frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"Kind of like I was transported there. Like a flashback."

"…A flashback."

"Like I was there for a couple seconds and then I was back."

Jim could practically hear the gears turning in Bones's head, and he could have pinpointed the exact second realization hit. It set in on his face, his eyes widening a fraction before he voiced the inevitable conclusion: "You mean like a hallucination."

Jim shook his head. "That's not what I said—"

"It's what you _described_ ," Bones snapped.

Jim's expression darkened. As much as the two of them joked about Bones's shitty bedside manner, it didn't make it any less of a pain in the ass to be on the receiving end of it.

"Ok, well, they're not long, all right?" he shot back. "It's not like I go into a fucking—fugue state or something—"

"They?"

 _Shit._

But there was no taking that back.

" _They_ , Jim?" Bones repeated. "How many times has this happened?"

Jim didn't respond right away. "…Twice. Last time was yesterday when I showed up at Mike's. Before that…couple weeks after I got back from Caerus IX."

Bones had to let him off the hook for not saying anything at Mike's. The man had been a hot mess; there was no way Jim would've brought it up then. But Caerus IX had been weeks ago, back in—

"Mid-July." Bones beat him to it, shaking his head in disbelief. "Why the _hell_ didn't you say anything?"

"Keep your voice down!" Jim hissed. "They've barely had an impact—"

"Yeah, except clearly the end of that sentence is _until now._ "

"No, I'm telling you because if something happens and I get—" he paused, "—stuck, I want you guys to leave anyways."

Bones stared at him. "No."

Jim looked sharply at him. "I'm not asking."

" _No_."

"Worst comes to worst, I'll figure something out—"

"You can't go down there!"

"Who are you gonna send instead?" Jim demanded. "We need Rllan, we need Uhura. Spock and I have combat training, and Sulu has to fly the ship. What do you want from me?"

The argument was already won, and Jim felt a flicker of guilt as he watched Bones flounder helplessly for a retort. He lifted his hands, then let them drop. "I want you to not get yourself killed."

"Bones, that's not gonna happen."

Bones glared at him. "It already did."

Silence stretched out between them. There wasn't any good way to answer that.

A moment later, however, Jim was spared from having to try. Violent coughing sounded from behind them, and both men turned to see Vattha, vibrant green eyes snapped open to the empty cargo bay.

Bones shot him a final, furious look before darting over. Seconds later Rllan emerged from the main cabin, followed quickly by Spock and Uhura. Jim hesitated for a moment before approaching, watching Bones and Rllan kneel on either side of the stretcher, Bones running a tricorder over Vattha's torso, Rllan speaking quietly in Klingon.

It made a strange, almost comical picture: Spock in civvies and face tattoos and Bones in dress grays, Uhura frowning in concentration as she listened to Rllan and Vattha speak. Under other circumstances, Jim thought grimly, he might've been tempted to laugh.

"Is he gonna be ok?" he asked, stepping forward as Rllan and Bones started undoing the stretcher restraints.

Rllan glanced up. "He will be fine."

Jim glanced at Bones, who had his back to him. The doctor nodded his confirmation, but otherwise said nothing.

Jim shifted and cleared his throat. "Welcome aboard," he said to Vattha, then glanced at Uhura, who interpreted.

Rllan's first officer regarded him with clear, focused eyes as he sat up, and managed a hoarse reply.

"He says thank you," Uhura said, then paused and turned to Bones. "He also says you did good work, for a Terran."

Bones snorted. "Is he a doctor?"

"A medic," Rllan said, regarding Bones coolly.

"Fair enough," Bones muttered. "Although I believe that's what you'd call a left-handed compliment."

Vattha turned to Rllan and began to speak again, but stopped when Rllan talked over him, gripping his arm. Jim frowned, glancing at Uhura. "What—"

"Kirk!" Scotty's voice rang out from the main cabin, and the engineer appeared in the doorway, eyes bright: "We've got the shuttle."

Spock glanced at Jim, then left the cargo bay, followed by Uhura. Rllan turned to Vattha, gripping his upper arm before speaking quietly. Vattha replied, nodded, then Rllan stood and left.

There was nothing for it. Jim turned to follow.

"Jim."

Halfway to the door, he turned back. Bones was on his feet, looking at him, his medkit in one hand. He seemed halfway between resigned and lost for words. He opened his mouth, then closed it. "Be safe," he said finally.

Jim managed a grim smile. "See you soon."

In the main cabin, Scotty handed out thermal coats. "We'll send ye over two at a time."

Jim glanced at Rllan, who had pulled on the loose, brown robe she'd brought over from the jumpship. "You ready?" he asked.

The Klingon captain's answer was to step over to the transport pad. Jim followed her, turning back to the cabin, and the rest of his crew.

Standing at the transport console, Scotty grinned. "Right," he said. "Good luck stormin' the castle."

Jim nodded. "Energize."

* * *

Kirk and Rllan dematerialized on the transport pad. Uhura watched as they vanished, a knot building in her stomach. She cast a glance back to the cargo bay.

The content of Rllan's exchange with her first officer had been nothing special: a gruff query from Rllan about how Vattha was doing, a sarcastic retort. Banter. But there was something else about it, something Uhura couldn't put her finger on, embedded in Rllan's manner, the way she spoke to him. The authority she seemed to exude.

To say nothing of the way Vattha had addressed her—or begun to address her—before she'd cut him off.

Rllan HoD—

Qlch'Ilj choq.

 _Captain Rllan—_

 _Save your speech._

The Klingon merchant corps maintained and respected rank—it was a well-known fact in Starfleet Communications. But the word _HoD_ , and the way Vattha had used it, carried a certain level of respect and loyalty Uhura had only rarely heard, and hardly among freighter crews.

But then, Rllan would have to command that kind of respect. To have escaped from Klingon military birds of prey, to have stolen what were obviously classified government reports, to recruit Federation citizens—Starfleet officers—to get her crew back. In a way, Uhura thought, Rllan reminded her of Kirk: always possessed of a plan, the gears in her head perpetually turning—and willing to stop at nothing to ensure her crew's safety.

 _Rllan HoD_.

Formal, and yet familiar. Rllan had to be her given name; by concealing her clan name she was being understandably protective of her House. Another surprising demonstration of Vattha's loyalty, and likely friendship with his captain.

It struck Uhura that only months ago, she would have had trouble identifying details like that. She remembered when she realized they had first started to click: in the loft of a student pub in London in mid-May. She'd fled indoors to escape the late spring drizzle, and had been waiting for Janice Rand—they'd made Friday night plans to catch a local production of _Macbeth_ in Romulan.

 _From outside, under the gentle buzz of conversation and music, a muted crackle of thunder, then the unmistakable rush of torrential rain. Through the high windows Uhura could see the downpour starting and sipped her tea, glad she'd made it inside before it had arrived._

 _She turned back to her PADD, hitting resume on the audio file she'd been replaying and puzzling over for the better part of an hour. It was an exchange between a Klingon freighter and a border patrol guard at a remote listening post, something innocuous and unclassified the Academy long-range sensor lab had picked up._

 _Guttural laughter rang through her ears. The freighter pilot had just said something that was clearly meant to be a joke, because the border guard laughed in response. Something about the patrolman's sister—or cousin. Uhura made a note on the makeshift transcript she'd started. Both Klingons had heavy, throaty accents, she suspected from one of the remote northern provinces of the Klingon homeworld. Perhaps a pair of kindred spirits happy to hear a familiar dialect, Uhura thought, a grin spreading across her face. A month ago, she would have had trouble identifying the region, but the more she listened the more it came back._

Her Klingon was far from rusty now, but it had been before.

She'd begun attacking that particular problem in early March, back when the buildings destroyed by the _Vengeance_ were still a smoldering ruin on the San Francisco waterfront. For the first week or so following Khan's recapture, it had been a welcome alternative to sleep, to the memory of the patrol leader on Kronos that replayed in her dreams: the malicious, bright eyes and the hand closed around her throat. Thankfully, the dreams had faded quickly, but she had decided that she wasn't going to be caught off-guard like that again.

"Nyota."

Uhura blinked, and looked up to see that Spock had stepped onto the transport pad.

"We must beam over before the shuttle moves out of range."

Uhura nodded and joined him, steeling herself. _You brought me here because I speak Klingon. Then let me speak Klingon._


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Potentially rough content ahead; scroll to the end if you'd like a heads-up about what's to come.

* * *

Chapter 10

They rematerialized to shouting.

The supply shuttle was dark, primarily lit by the image on the viewscreen: the purple-white, swirling form of what had to be Rura Penthe, flanked in the distance by twin suns. Silhouetted against it, Rllan was practically on top of the lone pilot, one hand on his throat, a knife pressed to the artery just beneath his ear. There was a trickle of blood running down his neck. Kirk was on the other side of the pilot's chair, yelling at her:

"That's enough!"

Rllan ignored him. " _The access code,_ " she snarled in Klingon.

Uhura took a tentative step forward and Spock moved in tandem with her, catching Kirk's attention.

"Uhura, tell him we mean him no harm!" Kirk ordered, casting a sharp look at Rllan.

Rllan threatened to cut open the pilot's stomach and let him die holding his own intestines.

The pilot looked up at Uhura, wide-eyed, and it became instantly clear he was not and had never been a soldier. He looked young, too—perhaps barely older than Chekov. Uhura looked at Rllan, then back at the pilot. " _Tell her what she wants and we will let you live_ ," she said.

The pilot stammered out a series of digits and Klingon letters.

" _Again_ ," Rllan growled, and the pilot repeated the code. She nodded. She lifted the knife from the pilot's throat, then brought the hilt down across the back of his head. He crumpled, and Kirk caught him by the shoulders before he fell. Spock and Uhura moved forward to help, pulling the man out of the seat and into the back of the shuttle.

Kirk glared at her. "Was that necessary?"

"You want him to be able to fight back?" Rllan snapped, sliding into the pilot's seat.

"Captain, it would be advisable to restrain this man," Spock said, supporting the pilot's legs. "If we plan to use the same vessel to escape."

Kirk looked at him and then at Uhura, nodding. "Let's see what we can find."

Uhura stood, searching for the shuttle's emergency compartments, when the comm unit crackled to life. A low, tired voice sounded over the speaker:

"TaH Qoy'yaH Morska."

Both Kirk and Spock looked at her.

"It's a listening post—a guard checkpoint," she explained. "They'll want to know our registration number."

In the pilot's seat, Rllan turned, looking directly at her. "You speak Klingon," she said.

Uhura glanced at Rllan, then back at Kirk, who nodded. She stood and made her way to the viewscreen.

"Dujvetlh 'oh nug? Rin," said a second voice: _what ship is that? Over._

Rllan picked up the comm speaker, pressing down the reply button, then parroted the supply ship's registration code and waited. After a few seconds, the one of the guards spoke again:

"Nugdaq ghos? Rin _."_

"They're asking for our destination," Uhura said quietly to Kirk and Spock.

"Rura pentedag. Rin," Rllan replied curtly.

A few seconds passed in silence, then a reply crackled over the speakers, followed by guttural chortling. Uhura turned back to Kirk and Spock, unsure how to translate it. "Don't catch any bugs," she said finally.

In Klingon, the expression was vaguely profane, a colloquialism with a standard response—Uhura had learned it back in April. She waited for Rllan to answer. And kept waiting. As laughter filled the cockpit, she looked at Rllan to find her face frozen in a mixture of confusion and outrage. It took Uhura another moment to realize why she wasn't answering: she didn't know how.

"Let me _,_ " she said, motioning for Rllan to hand her the speaker. Rllan looked sharply at her for a split second before handing over the speaker. Uhura held down the reply button and growled back: " _If we do, we'll feed them to your mother!_ "

This provoked another roar from the guards on the other end, before the muffled sound of clearance bell. _"Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for docking._ "

" _Acknowledged_ ," Uhura said. " _Over and out_."

Rllan cut the transmission. Uhura stared after her as she stood and moved away from the console to help Spock with tying up the unconscious pilot. Kirk glanced between her and Rllan.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

Uhura shook her head, staring after Rllan. "I don't know."

* * *

As the supply shuttle made its descent into Rura Penthe's atmosphere, it quickly became obvious why the surface was left unguarded. Howling wind buffeted the shuttle from the starboard side, causing it to jerk and shift with each gust, flecks of ice and rock scratching across the hull and the viewport. The cockpit was cast in a chemical purple glow from the distant, anemic light of the twin suns, filtered through the heavily polluted cloud layer.

Already on auto-nav, the shuttle traveled over the barren landscape, slowing and finally stopping to hover over a flat stretch of icy ground.

Jim glanced at Rllan, who was sitting in the pilot's seat. "Are we here?"

"Wait," Rllan said shortly.

Jim opened his mouth to reply, but stopped when beneath them, cracks appeared in the ice, and a rectangular cross-section of the ground was suddenly depressed down a meter. A heavy-looking trap door began to slide open, revealing a small docking bay, barely large enough for the shuttle to fit. Snow and ice spilled into the space beneath.

The shuttle began to lower itself into the bay, revealing high-ceilings and long, industrial fluorescent lights lining the walls. Storage transports on hover-pallets were stacked on all sides of the room, on ramps and catwalks surrounding a concrete pit—that the shuttle was descending into. At the right front corner of the room, there was a raised platform where a heavily-swaddled guard was operating a control console.

"Jim, it appears we are at a significant tactical disadvantage." Spock had appeared next to him and was also scanning the room.

Jim nodded, and started planning. "I see three guards. Platform at one o'clock, service door at eleven, catwalk at ten." He pointed out the third, a heavily-swaddled Klingon walking down a ramp toward the shuttle, holding a clipboard. "What about you?"

"There is a fourth beneath the platform," Spock said.

Though it cast a glare on the bow viewport, making it impossible for the guards to see in, the harsh fluorescent light also made it difficult to see out. Jim was grateful for Spock's eyes.

"I don't think we can come out shooting," Uhura said.

Jim looked between her and Rllan. "Do you two think you could get at least two of them in here?"

"Yes," Rllan said.

"Fantastic." He turned to Spock. "How's your aim?"

Spock handed over the phaser holstered to his belt. "I will likely be of more use in neutralizing the guards who approach the shuttle," he said.

Jim nodded, then turned to Rllan. "Listen, the last thing we need right now is a scene. Unless you want this to be over before it starts, that—" he pointed to the unconscious pilot, "—can't happen again. OK?"

Rllan shot him a glare. "I understand the risks."

"Good," Jim muttered.

The shuttle came to rest on the concrete with a soft _thump_ , and there was a loud, clanking knock against the port hatch.

While Jim, Spock and Uhura flattened themselves against the port wall, Rllan tapped a command into the flight console, then stood in plain view of the hatch. With a hiss of depressurization, the hatch cracked open and slid to the left. Freezing air and wan yellow light rushed into the tiny cabin.

A heavy boot set foot inside, and Jim could just see the edge of the guard's datapad as he barked something at Rllan in Klingon, and Rllan gave a cool reply.

The guard took another step—then collapsed, the datapad clattering to the floor, Spock's hand at the junction of his shoulder and neck. Rllan grabbed the guard by one arm and dragged him in, then shouted something in Klingon. Jim glanced back at the viewport to see the eleven o'clock guard moving quickly down the ramp, scowling.

He appeared in the doorway a moment later and was quickly nerve-pinched by Spock—but not before he caught sight of the other guard and let out a shout of warning.

Jim didn't wait for the other two Klingons to move. He darted out onto the platform, took aim, and fired at the guard on the raised platform, who crumpled, stunned. The guard beneath the platform took off running in the direction of the service door. Jim's second shot missed as the guard lunged behind a high stack of crates.

 _Shit_. If the guard made it to the service door, this was no longer a stealth mission. Jim darted forward, taking aim again.

There was a blur of movement to his left: Rllan, sprinting up the ramp.

The guard, who had peered around the corner of the crate tower, saw her coming and made a break for the service door, only to be slammed into the wall.

No longer in the enclosed space of the shuttle where a shot could damage control panels or necessary viewscreens, Rllan had opted to use the disruptor rather than the knife. She had the muzzle pressed under the guard's neck.

"Rllan!" Jim shouted, as she snarled at the guard in Klingon.

Unlike the boyish pilot, the guard was far past his prime, with grizzled, gray hair pulled back tightly from the crown of his head. At Jim's shout, he looked over, then turned back to Rllan, dark eyes glittering.

" _Rllan_ ," he repeated, then spoke to Rllan again, his lips parting in a grin.

Taunting her.

Rllan growled at him again, repeating whatever she'd said before, and the guard spat in her face. A split second's silence, and Rllan armed the disruptor.

" _Wait!_ " Jim caught her arm as the charge whined. He turned to where Spock was racing up the catwalk, followed quickly by Uhura.

As the guard collapsed under Spock's hand, Rllan pulled away, holstering the disruptor.

"You want him to get up later?" she demanded.

Rllan looked archly at him, and for a moment, no one spoke.

Spock broke the silence: "Jim, the longer we remain here the more likely we are to be discovered."

Rllan moved first, bending over the unconscious guard and lifting him bodily by the wrist so that he dangled by his shoulder socket.

Jim frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Getting a map." She dragged the guard to a nearby wall console, lifting his hand and pressing it to an adjacent scanner, then letting him slump unceremoniously to the floor as the console unlocked. "He says my crew are in the mines."

"How does he know?" Uhura asked.

"They don't get many imperial traitors."

As Rllan and Uhura searched for a map to download to their comms, Jim and Spock dragged the unconscious guards out of sight, taking their disruptors and redistributing them so that everyone in the away team was properly armed. They reconvened in front of the service door where Uhura handed back comms and Rllan glared impatiently.

"You know where we're going?" Jim asked.

Rllan's answer was to push past him. "Don't fall behind."

* * *

 _"Shift change!"_ bellowed the guard at the head of the crowd, in Klingon. Like the guard in the cargo bay Rllan had used to get the map, he was bent and grizzled, and one of his eyes was covered by a permanent-looking patch. In one hand, he held a long particle stick like a staff, in the other a coiled leash, at the end of which was an evil-looking creature the size of a greyhound. Some kind of canine, but unlike any Uhura had ever seen, with tufts of mangy, white fur, beady black eyes, and large, uneven fangs jutting out of its jaws, fitting unevenly together.

Uhura shot a sidelong glance at Kirk, to her left, then turned back to the front of the narrow waiting area, her head bowed as if in defeat. Rllan, hooded and similarly bent, was ahead of her, Spock behind. Between the disguises and their unassuming postures, they were taking precautions to be as inconspicuous as possible, although she wasn't entirely sure they needed to worry. The inmates around them were dead-eyed: exhausted and—literally—ragged. Most were draped in thin garments that were all but shredded, either by the length of their time in the prison or by the harshness of their labor in the mines. They would find out soon, Uhura thought. If there was anything they needed to worry about, it was being singled out as newcomers by the state of their clothing.

They had wound up on mining duty half by logic, half by chance.

The service door had led them to a narrow hallway, strangely incongruous with the industrial, but fully-modernized cargo bay. The floor had been made of the same reinforced concrete, but the walls were jagged cave rock, lined with the same wan, industrial lamps, but strung together with thick, exposed wires. The ceiling was far above them, a faint crack between the two walls. It struck Uhura that they likely _were_ in a natural cave—a series of them, linked to the dilithium mines.

They had moved single-file, Rllan, Kirk ahead of her, Spock behind, following the hallway as it curved to the left in a perpetual blind corner, until they came to a door: heavy and metal, like the cargo bay entrance, with a narrow, grimy slot of a window just at eye-level. As Rllan and Kirk peered through, Uhura pulled out her comm to check the map, to find that they were at a T-junction of sorts. Ahead of them, the hallway dead-ended. To their left was what looked like the prison kitchens, and to their right, a wide, open space the hallway had been curving around like the outside of a bowl.

"Prison yard?" Kirk had suggested quietly, and Uhura had shrugged. There was only one way to find out.

Kirk had been right.

They had found themselves in the belly of a high cavern, unevenly lit by broad-beam search lights and more yellow, fluorescent lamps. High above them were a series of metal catwalks, patrolled by guards carrying what looked like disruptor rifles. On the far side of the room, up a natural slope in the cave structure was what looked like a trap door, likely leading to the surface. Four guards were posted there, all heavily-armed, also accompanied by one of the deformed-greyhound beasts. Ahead of them were groups of inmates, milling quietly around. If they were an accurate representation of the population, then it was clear that more than half of the prisoners of Rura Penthe were Klingons, but a significant portion were from elsewhere in the galaxy. Uhura recognized a handful of Trills, Cardassians, Romulans, Andorians—even the odd human, though as they wandered through, Uhura heard no Terran languages being spoken. Most were slurping from tiny, metal bowls: they'd clearly just missed lunch.

A sharp cry had echoed through the cavern, followed by a shrieking retort in an unknown language. Several search beams had turned to the far corner of the room, where a fight had broken out between two inmates. Many of the prisoners rose, forming a circle around the combatants, jeering their support for one or the other. No guards moved forward to break it up. From one of the catwalks above, Uhura thought she heard laughter.

The fight had drawn most everyone's attention, and so the away team was free to slip through the yard unnoticed. They had made their way to the back of the room into another tunnel, before running into the group being led to the next mining shift and being snapped at by a guard to fall in line. Minutes later they were being handed headlamps and tiny, dull hammers—evidently the more effective laser-picks of modern mining operations were too dangerous in the hands of a bunch of prison inmates.

The lift nearest them rattled into place, and the guard cranked the doors open manually, revealing another group of prisoners, removing head lamps and flinching at the dim light. It was obvious they hadn't seen much of it during their shift. As they shuffled out, the creature on the leash sniffed at them with interest, only to be jerked back by the guard.

The new group was ushered forward from behind, cramming into the tiny elevator, the crowd condensing into a stream to accommodate the small doorway. Rllan was pushed through first, then Kirk. Another prisoner, a powder-blue Andorian woman with arms like sticks, was prodded in before Uhura. Almost inside, movement caught Uhura's eye, and her heart skipped a beat. The guard was looking into the crowd, right at her.

No—not at her. Over her shoulder.

His single eye narrowed. " _Romulan_ ," he barked.

Uhura whipped around to where Spock was standing, ignoring the jab she received as another prisoner elbowed past her.

Spock halted, regarding the Klingon coolly. Uhura looked back into the elevator where Kirk was staring after them, wide-eyed.

" _You will wait for the next one_ ," the guard said, a hint of a smirk on his face.

Kirk took a step forward, but Uhura preempted him, shooting the guard a hard glare. " _He doesn't understand you_ ," she said sharply.

The guard's working eye flicked over to her with interest.

" _He doesn't understand Klingon_ ," she clarified.

The guard raised a bristly eyebrow. " _He'll learn quickly enough._ "

" _No, he won't_ ," Uhura snapped, executing the idea in her head as quickly as it came to her. She threw a decidedly disdainful look back at Spock, who barely reacted. " _He's an idiot_ ," she said. " _His brain doesn't work right. He only does what I tell him to_."

The guard leered at her. " _So, you are his keeper. And what does he do for you in return?_ "

Uhura could see just enough of Spock out of the corner of her eye to see his fingers twitch. She ignored the obvious innuendo. " _You want him to work well_?" she asked. " _You send him with me._ "

The guard looked her over, then looked back at Spock, weighing his options. Then he smirked and waved Spock forward.

They stepped into the lift, the last two inside before the inner doors rattled shut.

As the outer doors closed and the lift creaked into motion, Uhura looked ahead, hardly daring to move. Then, just audible over the mechanical scraping around them, there was a gentle breath by her right ear, a murmur in low Romulan: " _Most effective_."

The lift descended into darkness. It moved slowly, and for a seemingly impossible amount of time, narrow slats of light filtering through the crack in the doors every level they passed, interspersed with long stretches of rock. Well after her ears had popped, the lift creaked to a halt. A tinny, mechanical voice out of an unseen speaker grumbled in Klingon:

" _First level_."

The inner doors creaked open, followed by the outer, and it became immediately clear why the previous shift had flinched at the light: the caves were blindingly dark, lit only by the inmates' head lamps and a set of high-beam flashlights held by the guards.

They were ushered down a narrow corridor away from the lifts, then barked at to _get to work!_ And prodded into one of the tunnels. After which point, the guards seemed to just…disappear.

"Not much of a security system," Kirk muttered.

"Indeed, though it seems the prisoners are subdued by other methods," Spock replied. "Deprivation of light and sustenance."

Kirk made a noise of assent. "Let's find who we're looking for and get the hell out of here. Rllan?"

Rllan flicked on her headlamp. "In Vattha's and my absence, my chief engineer is in charge. His name is Jojon. He will know where the others are."

"Right." Kirk glanced around their small circle. "Let's divide and conquer. If you don't find anyone, meet back here in ten minutes and we'll move on."

He moved forward into the tunnel ahead of him. Spock chose the tunnel immediately to the right, and Rllan the tunnel immediately to the left. Uhura walked past to the tunnel just beyond Rllan's. As her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, she noted the tunnel walls weren't solid, but perforated in places, cracked open, leaving tiny windows into the adjacent tunnels.

She hadn't taken two steps into the tunnel when a blur of movement through one of the cracks in the rock drew her gaze. She turned just in time to see a hand reach out and grab Rllan by the shoulder, and to hear a gasp in Klingon:

 _"_ Qowon HoD!"

Rllan turned and slammed the offender into the adjacent wall. Through the narrow window into the other tunnel Uhura could see the glint of Rllan's knife, could just hear the Klingon captain's response:

 _"Speak that name again and it will be the last words to leave your throat."_

Qowon…?

It had to be her clan name. Uhura ripped the headlamp from her forehead and pressed herself against the rock, watching.

" _I knew you would come, I knew it!_ "

The beam of Rllan's headlamp caught the person she had pinned and revealed another Klingon: a slender young woman, who seemed utterly unconcerned with the fact that she was being threatened at knife-point. She was beaming, revealing a crooked smile with missing teeth.

A member of the crew? A muscle in Uhura's thigh twitched for her to move, to rejoin Rllan, but then the other woman spoke again, causing Uhura to stop short, listening.

" _Your crew—there is little time, many have already been killed. You must regroup with those who remain and return to Kronos_."

 _"Who are you?"_ Rllan snarled. " _How do you know me?_ "

" _I am Davtargh, daughter of Qob."_ The girl said something else, but it was indistinguishable over a distant crash of machinery.

 _"Kronos is dead,"_ Rllan replied.

" _No!"_ the young Klingon shook her head vehemently. " _There is hope. You still have allies there."_

Another crash of machinery, and this time a shout, a yelp. Uhura leaned forward against the rock, straining to hear, but missed their next exchange. Whatever it was, something Davtargh said seemed to enrage Rllan. She pressed her forearm into the girl's throat. " _QuSurgh was my ally, Noluy was my ally! Laovj was my ally! They all_ died _for it! Mogh never breathed a word in our support!"_

Davtargh pushed back and croaked something in response.

Uhura watched as Rllan said nothing—then begin to ease her grip, barely, allowing the girl to suck in a deep breath.

" _You must return,_ " Davtargh said.

" _What makes you think anything has changed? Lorak is still Chancellor._ "

" _These are turbulent times._ " There was a glint in the young Klingon's eye. " _Turbulence affords opportunity."_

Uhura felt her breath catch in her throat.

Rllan was silent again. Then she spoke. " _You know where to find my crew."_

" _Yes."_

 _"Take me to them."_

Rllan lifted her arm from the young woman's throat. Uhura watched Davtargh move toward the tunnel entrance—heading straight in her direction. Uhura scrambled to her feet, moving down the tunnel and positioning herself in one of the hollow pockets of rock, flicking her headlamp back on. Rllan and Davtargh caught up to her in no time.

"Who's this?" Uhura asked in Standard, eyeing Davtargh. The less the girl knew about Uhura's knowledge of Klingon the better.

"She will take us to my crew," Rllan answered.

Davtargh led them deep into the tunnel, past chipping work crews, Rllan shooting her virulent glare at anyone who dared look their way. The further they progressed, the thicker the air seemed to become. Despite the persistent chill, Uhura felt herself sweating under her heavy thermal coat, struggling to keep up. Finally, just as they hit a dead-end, Rllan darted forward to a small group of inmates in the corner. The most visible was a bald Klingon man, with skin so pale that in the dim cave light it seemed nearly translucent. At the sound, he looked up and sprang to his feet.

" _Captain!"_

Rllan clasped his arm. " _Jojon._ " She looked over Jojon's comrades. There were four of them, equally haggard, but all on their feet regardless, waiting for orders. _"Where are the others?_ " Rllan asked.

" _The rest of my engineering staff is in isolation,_ " Jojon said, shaking his head.

Rllan's heavy brow knitted. " _What about—"_

" _Dead. All dead._ "

Rllan was still for a moment, then nodded and turned to Uhura. " _We must find Kirk_."

Jojon's eyes widened almost comically. "Kirk?"

Rllan huffed out a breath as she began to lead them back the way they'd come.

" _It's a long story._ "

* * *

Ten minutes had evidently passed, because Kirk and Spock were waiting for them in the original tunnel.

"You found them," Kirk said immediately, stepping over to Rllan, Spock close on his heels. Spock caught Uhura's eye for a moment, and she opened her mouth to speak—then closed it. She was still processing Rllan and Davtargh's hurried exchange in the adjacent tunnel. Now wasn't the time.

Kirk blinked at the tiny group. "This is everyone?"

Rllan shook her head. "Three others are in another part of the prison."

"Right."

"This is Jojon," Rllan said, gesturing to the engineer.

Kirk nodded to him. "Nice to meet you."

Uhura translated. Jojon didn't reply, but eyed Kirk suspiciously.

Kirk turned to Rllan and Uhura in turn. "Right. We need a plan to get out of here."

Rllan raised an eyebrow.

"Nearly all the guards are posted in the general vicinity of the lifts," Spock said. "They fail to patrol the tunnels with any regularity because the efforts of each shift are pooled."

"They sink or swim together," Kirk added, and it became clear that he and Spock had already discussed this.

Jojon and the other members of Rllan's crew were looking curiously at them; Uhura repeated what had just been said in Klingon.

Jojon frowned at her. " _We outnumber them,_ " he said, and Rllan translated.

"It won't help the rest of your crew if we have to fight our way out," Kirk answered.

Rllan looked as if she were considering this. She opened her mouth to speak, but never got the chance to. From around the corner of the main tunnel came an armored figure carrying a disruptor rifle.

" _Hey!_ " he barked, pointing the rifle at the group. " _You want to go to the surface?_ "

Uhura watched as Rllan placed a hand on the disruptor holstered at her belt, out of the guard's view. Kirk and Spock both took a step forward, and Jojon turned, the breadth of his shoulders shielding Rllan from the disruptor rifle.

Then a voice sounded in heavily accented Standard. "I help you."

Uhura turned, and realized it was Davtargh, standing at Rllan's elbow. She looked Uhura directly in the eye. "I help you," she repeated. She turned to Rllan and spoke in Klingon, her eyes bright:

 _"Remember me._ "

She struck like a rattlesnake, jamming the heel of her hand into Rllan's jaw, then snatching at Rllan's waist. Jojon and Rllan's crewmembers shouted and the guard took an involuntary step back, disoriented by the tumult. Uhura saw a flash of motion as Davtargh darted around the group, a glint of steel in her hand.

The guard started visibly and fumbled with the disruptor rifle, trying to take aim.

Too late.

With a berserker scream, Davtargh hurled herself forward, Rllan's knife aimed at the guard's throat. She made her mark: the guard let out a strangled cry and dropped as she slammed into him. A blast of disruptor fire ricocheted off the cave ceiling as the rifle tightened in his grip. The knife came up again, covered in dark, purple blood, and Davtargh plunged it down, still screaming—then a third time, and a fourth.

The guard's flailing limbs twitched, then went still. Davtargh pushed to her feet, her face and chest stained dark. She looked at them only once, then ran howling into the main tunnel, her path carrying her straight past the lifts—and the majority of the guards.

Moments later, far ahead of them there were shouts and disruptor fire. Davtargh's shrieking was still audible, echoing back to them through the tunnels.

For a few seconds, no one moved.

Then Kirk seemed to wake up. "Go," he said, pushing Rllan forward. " _Go!"_

* * *

The fanged canine was the first thing visible as Kirk and Rllan pried open the outer doors of the lift. Uhura's phaser blast caught the animal directly in the chest; it sunk to the floor with a whimper, stunned.

Its owner, the one-eyed guard with the particle stick, turned in surprise, just in time for Spock's hand to close on his neck. He dropped to the floor, and Rllan's crewmembers stepped over to him, searching him for inconspicuous weapons. Jojon picked up the particle stick.

"You said three more?" Kirk asked Rllan.

Rllan nodded. "In isolation."

"Where is that?"

Uhura had already pulled up the map. "Far side of the prison, on the other side of the armory," she said, holding it out for Kirk to examine.

"Captain," Spock said, "it is likely we are now too large a group to pass unnoticed through the prison. It would be logical for the majority of us to go back to the cargo bay and secure the shuttle while a smaller party proceeds to the isolation cells to rescue the remainder of Rllan's crew."

Kirk nodded, and Spock took a step forward. For a moment Uhura felt adrenaline jolt through her stomach—

—only to dissipate when Kirk spoke:

"Good thinking. You and Uhura, head back to the shuttle with Rllan's crew. Rllan and I will get the others."

Rllan glanced briefly at him before nodding and repeating the order in Klingon. Jojon cast Kirk another suspicious look, but obeyed, following Spock and Uhura down the corridor leading away from the mines. They parted at the next junction, Spock, Uhura and Rllan's crew heading left, Kirk and Rllan heading right.

"Good luck," Kirk said, glancing at Spock and Uhura, before followed Rllan.

"Same to you," Uhura said, and Spock nodded, watching Kirk disappear around the corner.

They made their way back down the tunnel, leading Rllan's crew, silent but for the occasional direction as Uhura read their path off the comm.

Uhura could feel her heart pounding as they walked. She glanced briefly back at Rllan's crew, then, when it was obvious none of them were looking at her, turned to Spock, and spoke to him in Vulcan.

Specifically, a sibilant eastern dialect: one she'd consulted him on frequently while working on her senior thesis. Standard was far too risky—Davtargh had demonstrated that—and Klingons were even more likely to speak the main Romulan dialects.

" _I need to tell you something,_ " she murmured.

Spock turned toward her a fraction.

" _In the mines, I overheard Rllan and the young Klingon woman talking. She wasn't one of Rllan's crew. I think Rllan…"_ she paused, choosing her words carefully. "… _hasn't been entirely truthful with us."_

" _What did you hear?_ " Spock asked quietly.

Uhura described the exchange: the revelation of what was likely Rllan's clan name, the mentions of dead allies, Davtargh's reference to _opportunity_. " _Spock,_ " she concluded, " _at this point I seriously doubt she's a merchant._ "

" _I am inclined to agree."_

" _And I don't think it's unlikely she might try something once we get out of here."_

Spock was quiet for a moment. " _Nyota, I find your logic sound. For now, however, we must focus on our escape. We will have to…"_ He trailed off.

Uhura glanced up at him to see his brow pulled into the slightest of frowns.

" _Cross that bridge when we come to it?_ " she supplied, wincing at the awkward translation.

But Spock only nodded, briefly meeting her eyes before looking back to the tunnel ahead.

" _Precisely_."

* * *

The isolation unit was barely guarded, and for good reason: compared to the mining crews, the inmates inside barely needed watching.

The cells, Jim thought, following Rllan down the row as she peered into the narrow slot of a window on each cell door, were less like something out of _The Great Escape_ and more like the pictures of ancient, 20th century prisons he'd seen in Terran history books. The floors were bowed to create a bowl and lined with tile to collect snowmelt that trickled down the concrete walls, leaving the humanoid occupants standing in a pool of ankle-deep, freezing water. The cells were also far closer to the surface of the planet, counteracting the heat that rose from the bottom of the caves.

The locks were heavy-duty, but rudimentary. As a wayward kid back in Iowa, Jim had done his fair share of breaking-and-entering; with the right tools, Rura Penthe could have a small-scale prison riot on their hands. The idea grew more and more vindictive in the back of his head, the more windows he looked into.

The thought of his own crew—and Rllan's—pulled him back to the task at hand.

"Anything yet?" he asked in a harsh whisper.

Ahead of him, Rllan turned and shook her head, then kept moving—then stopped short at the third-to-last cell. "Kirk!"

Jim dashed over. "These three?" he asked.

Rllan checked the other two cells, then turned and nodded, drawing her disruptor.

* * *

The remains of Rllan's crew were a trio of shivering engineers, one of whom seemed to be considerably less lucid than the others. He was all but mute, dark eyes glassy, being supported by the other two. All three were far too thin, and as ragged and filthy as those in the mines.

At a minimum, Jim thought, they would blend in.

Peering around a rock formation at the edge of the yard, he could see that the cavernous room was far more crowded than it had been when they'd passed through before. Maybe the Klingon girl's screaming rampage had prompted an evacuation from the mines. The passage to the cargo bay was just visible through the crowd.

"We will not pass unseen," said Rllan, from his left.

Jim nodded. "We can go in pairs, or one at a time," he answered. "Less conspicuous."

Rllan repeated the command to her crew, then pointed out the passageway on the other side of the room. They sent the two lucid engineers first, then a few seconds later Rllan, and the wavering third, his arm draped over her shoulder. Jim waited for them to get a decent head-start, then started into the yard himself, weaving a meandering path between groups of inmates, but making steady progress toward the other side of the room.

Three-quarters of the way across the yard, he passed a trio of prisoners drawn into a tight circle. The inmate on the far side of the group was a Romulan: a huge, gangling man with sandy hair sticking up in tufts, and jagged tattoos etched from temple to cheekbone. Sharp, water-colored eyes narrowed as he passed by them.

Jim kept walking, even as he saw movement in his periphery.

"Human."

The call was a bark, from directly behind him. Jim ignored it—maybe he could pass himself off as a non-Standard speaker. Ahead of him, on the edge of the crowd, he saw Rllan glance back, saw her arm tense beneath her robe, doubtless reaching for the disruptor.

" _Human!"_ the Romulan shouted.

So much for that.

Jim suppressed a groan and slowed to an exaggerated halt, watching as Rllan stopped at the edge of the crowd. He shook his head, just slightly, waited for her to keep moving, then pivoted his heels, raising his eyebrows at the inmate.

"You know, you're gonna have to be a lot nicer if you're looking for a kept man," he said, giving the Romulan a feral smile. "Maybe buy me a drink first."

The Romulan approached him, eyes shining. "We don't get your kind here often."

"I'll just bet. So…that a yes or a no? 'Cause I'm partial to Saurian brandy."

A crowd was gathering now, prisoners of all kids looking directly at him, the room beginning to buzz with anticipation.

"You won't need a drink when I'm through with you."

Jim paused a moment to "consider," then shot back a smirk before turning to leave. "More's the pity."

"You can't lie to me, human," the Romulan said, his voice almost quivering with malicious glee. "I know your face."

 _Shit._

Jim felt his heart sink. It was this exact scenario he'd been counting on avoiding. Rllan and the wounded engineer had now rejoined the other crewmembers. Rllan was staring at him, eyes wide and demanding.

The inmate was now steps behind him. " _Every_ Romulan knows your face."

Jim sent Rllan back a grimace, before mouthing: _Go!_

The rough hand on his shoulder was inevitable.

He turned swinging.

* * *

 **A/N** : Potentially squicky content includes the following: depictions of physical violence, blood, physical and verbal threats, and malnourished people in horrible prison conditions, as well as discussions of unsavory, coercive relationships among inmates.

Credit where credit's due: some dialogue in this chapter is lovingly borrowed from _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_. For everyone who's been sticking with me despite the massive delays in posting, thank you-it means a lot. 3


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N** : Potentially rough content ahead; scroll to the end if you'd like a heads-up about what's to come!

* * *

Chapter 11

 _Translated from Klingon._

[Stardate 2259.219, 0531 FST]

[Transcript of recorded meeting between Chief Warden, Gulag Rura Penthe, and Captain, Imperial Klingon Starship _Muqtovor_ , pp. 11-12]

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Allow me to summarize what you have just told me.

[Chief Warden]: Captain…

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: The intruders entered the prison through the shuttle bay, neutralizing the posted guards, then proceeded to navigate the facility, entering with very little difficulty not only the mines but the isolation units, and extracting no fewer than seven prisoners, resulting in the death of two guards, and the serious injury of several others. Is this correct?

[Chief Warden]: Captain, if you'll give me a moment to explain—we are shorthanded. We have been since the start of the—the incidents. Many of the guards—their families are on Kronos, sir. Some have struck deals with supply ships and have—have left their posts. In times like these, people abandon honor. My guards tell me they must defend their Houses—

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Tell me, Warden. Are you aware of the identity of these intruders?

[Chief Warden]: …The…the traitor Qowon, sir. She returned for her crew.

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: And the others?

[Chief Warden]: …No, sir.

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Guess.

[Chief Warden]: Sir?

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Guess, Warden. Do I need to repeat myself?

[Chief Warden]: No, sir. ...According to witness accounts there were…two humans, one Romulan. Mercenaries, I would say. Honorless dogs with nothing to lose—or expecting a large payoff. Otherwise they would have to be insane to come here.

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Apparently not. …Warden, I am going to show you something. This is classified security footage, known only to the High Council. Six months ago, a group of Starfleet officers infiltrated an abandoned province on Qo'noS. They were intercepted by a Klingon patrol. They were aided in their escape by another human, an unknown. A warrior of great strength and skill.

[Note: at this point the recording picks up speech from a second recording, in Terran Standard, what we believe to be three male-register voices:

Voice 1: _Stand down!_

Voice 2: _How many torpedoes?_

Voice 1: _Stand down!_

Voice 2: _The torpedoes, the weapons you threatened me with in your message, how many are there?_

Voice 3: _Seventy-two._ ]

[Chief Warden]: But that's—it can't be—

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: You see the resemblance.

[Chief Warden]: … _Sir…_

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: These are the men you have allowed to escape. … Do you understand what your incompetence has cost the Empire?

[Chief Warden]: …With…with respect, Captain, these days I am often unsure there will still be an Empire.

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: _Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…_

[Chief Warden]: Sir?

[Note: the recording becomes unintelligible at this point, for a duration of thirty-eight seconds. The recording picks up what we believe to be a shout, followed by a long, hacking cough, liquid dripping onto the floor, then a loud crash.]

[Captain, IKS _Muqtovor_ ]: Clean up this mess. Play this for his successor.

* * *

Stardate 2259.219 0021 FST

In the cargo bay, the guards were gone, as well as the pilot they'd left restrained in the shuttle. Everything else was untouched. Uhura felt the blood draining from her face as she reemerged from the cargo shuttle, shaking her head.

On the ramp, disruptor drawn and at the ready, Spock was blank-faced as usual, but his eyebrow twitched upward. "We must prepare to leave."

"What if it's a trap?" Uhura asked, casting a wary look at the shuttle.

"There is no other way back to Craft 17. I will endeavor to verify if there is a problem with the ship. I suggest that we open the hangar door."

"But that'll alert the other guards to our presence."

"They are likely already aware of intruders within the prison."

Jojon appeared at her elbow, frowning. " _What is he saying?_ " he demanded.

Uhura repeated what Spock had said, and the engineer turned to him. " _I know Klingon ships better than you ever will, Vulcan. Let me._ "

Another of Rllan's crew, stocky and bright-eyed like Vattha, spoke up: " _I can get the hangar doors_ ," then took off up the ramp.

Uhura glanced back at Spock, who was staring at her, waiting for clarification. Before she could offer it, a _bang_ came from the locked service door, making her jump.

Without a word, Spock took position behind a hover-pallet, drawing the disruptor he'd taken before from the now-missing Klingon guards. Uhura did the same, drawing the phaser, watching as Jojon strode up the catwalk and stood to the side of the door, holding the particle stick at eye-level like a baseball bat.

More banging—then an electric _crackle_ , and weapons firing. Uhura shifted in place, flicking off the safety switch.

With a sudden metallic shriek, the door was wrenched partially open, revealing Rllan's robed arm, then her face, teeth gritted in concentration. Once able to fit herself through the doorway she reached back through, supporting a Klingon who was all but unconscious, then followed by two others.

Uhura's relief evaporated when she realized no one else was coming through.

"Where's Kirk?" she demanded, stepping out of her hiding place as Rllan passed off her incapacitated crewmember to the other two.

"He was seen."

Uhura felt her eyes widen.

"We have to go," Rllan said.

Uhura pursued her down the ramp. "We're not leaving him!"

Rllan spun around, eyes flashing. "We have already been compromised!"

"We came here for _your_ crew, not to trade them for ours! _Spock._ " Uhura turned, and found Spock standing a meter behind her.

"The captain's statement is accurate," he said.

Uhura stared at him. He turned his gaze to her, and she felt her heart leap into her throat.

"I will extract Jim. If I do not return in ten minutes, you must reconvene with the others."

"Spock, _wait_ —"

Spock didn't wait to hear the rest of her protest, but raced up the catwalk and disappeared from view.

* * *

The blow sent Jim reeling, and jeers, howls, erupted from the circle of inmates surrounding them.

— _built like a fucking gorilla—_

was the half-formed thought that flashed through his mind as he stumbled, ears ringing, vision temporarily greyed-out.

The next, half a second later when he could see again, was that it had been awhile since he'd been in an actual fistfight. Whaling on Khan, surrounded by the bodies of the slain Klingon patrol back in the Katha province, didn't count. The Romulan was slower than he was, but he'd miscalculated. His reaction time still needed work.

He dodged backward as he reassumed a defensive position, expecting another punch from the sandy-haired Romulan. It never came.

The man was nowhere to be seen.

A shout came from above, in Klingon. Jim looked up to the catwalk directly ahead of him to see three guards, all holding disruptor rifles trained down at the circle of prisoners below. He blinked, then looked around the circle at the other prisoners. Some, like the sandy-haired Romulan, had scattered, some were looking around in confusion—as if this had never happened before.

Another cry in Klingon: Jim turned to see more guards, heavily armored and armed, all shouting and shoving aside inmates, approaching from the edges of the yard. At the far side of the room, Rllan was nowhere to be seen.

Then a looming, horned, blue humanoid swung a huge elbow into the face of one of the nearby guards. The guard's head snapped back; his grip on the gun loosened, and the blue humanoid snatched it.

 _Shit._

Jim ducked as the first shots rang out over his head, as bodies scattered in all directions, jostling him left and right.

To hell with it. He drew the phaser and scanned for cover through the scrambling crowd.

A crackling, bright green disruptor blast shot past his ear with centimeters to spare. Jim recoiled in time to see the sandy-haired Romulan crumple, a crude shiv dropping from his hand to the floor. Jim whirled to the source, and was instantly flooded with relief and dismay.

 _"Spock!_ What are you—"

Spock interrupted him, before neatly taking out an inmate rushing at him with a rock: "Captain, behind you."

Jim dodged right and blocked a punch from a scruffy Andorian. The Andorian lunged at him again, and he punctuated his answer with blows: "Still—not—Captain, Spock!"

The Andorian dropped, dazed. Another disruptor blast went straight over Jim's shoulder.

He whirled back around. "You think you could get a little _closer_ with that?"

They ended up back-to-back, warding off attackers from all sides as they tried to make their way to a better position.

Spock shouted back over his shoulder: "Jim, I do not believe this counts as _stealth_."

* * *

"It's been too long."

"We have given them ten."

"Are you always so exacting with your own crew?"

Rllan cast her a sharp look, but said nothing.

Above them, the shuttle bay doors were open, heavy clouds carrying snow across the frozen sky, faster and louder than when they'd approached and docked, masking the sound of the fight. For a brief moment, the wind died down; the shuttle bay grew quieter—just enough for them to hear the sounds of disruptor fire, echoing down the hall. Uhura felt her blood run cold.

Movement caught her eye, drew her gaze to the right. She saw Rllan stand. "We don't have time for this," the Klingon captain said. "If you want to die here that is your business." She stepped neatly down the catwalk, heading for the shuttle. "Jojon!"

 _No—_

Uhura looked between the door and Rllan's retreating figure, then shot to her feet and pursued her. "They were the ones who got you here in the first place!" she shouted over the storm.

Rllan ignored her, barking orders at her crew. Uhura watched as Jojon disappeared into the shuttle, just visible through the scratched cockpit, his pale hands flying over the flight console. Those of the crew who weren't already inside, darted past Uhura, disappearing into the small craft, until it was just the two of them on the catwalk together.

Uhura felt her fists clench, her right hand around the grip of the phaser. "Where is your honor?" she shouted at Rllan's back. "Or did you leave it in the mines with the rest of your crew?"

Rllan stopped in her tracks, then turned slowly to face her. The Klingon captain's head was tilted forward like a bull, her jaw tight, her eyes dark with rage. For a moment, Uhura wondered if she was about to get a disruptor shot between the eyes.

Then slowly, Uhura watched her swallow her fury and answer, speaking just above the howl of the storm above.

"My honor does not belong to you."

Rllan turned away.

The shuttle engines fired. The ship's forward high-beams cutting through the dim light of the shuttle bay, snowflakes swirling through the thick beams of light.

Desperate, Uhura switched tactics. "They'll never let you on the ship without Kirk and Spock. Or me," she said. "The shuttle's useless to you! You won't get ten-thousand kilometers beyond Rura Penthe." Rllan put a foot inside the shuttle and Uhura lunged forward, catching her arm. Rllan recoiled at her touch, eyes flashing, and Uhura switched quickly to Klingon:

" _Whatever you're trying to do on Kronos, you won't succeed. You need us."_

Rllan glared at her, and Uhura was almost certain she was about to be thrown back up the catwalk. But then the Klingon's eyes seemed to change.

She took Uhura's wrist and jerked her hand away—and stepped out of the shuttle.

Uhura waited for her to let go, but Rllan didn't, instead maneuvering her roughly toward the shuttle.

"Go," she said. "They stay, I stay."

One of the engineers got to his feet, wide-eyed. " _Captain_."

Jojon appeared in the doorway. "Rllan HoD—"

Uhura stared at her. "That's not what I—"

Rllan talked over them both, in Klingon: " _If you want to find your missing ships, you will come back for us_." She gave Jojon a meaningful look. Only when the engineer had nodded his understanding did she too disappear up the catwalk.

* * *

It had been too long.

On the tow rig's scanners they were able to pick up a handful of transmissions, but without Uhura or a reliable universal translator, they were all but useless. Even with Vattha on board, the first officer didn't speak Standard and none of them spoke Klingon. To say nothing of the fact that he was kipped out in the cargo bay, still unable to be on his feet for long periods of time.

There were only so many times McCoy could pace the width of the tiny cabin without losing his mind (and driving everyone else there in the process). He thought—absently—he was probably being excessive as he approached Vattha with a tricorder for the third time in half an hour. He knew he was being excessive when the Klingon swatted the device—and McCoy's hand with it—away from his face, snarling something in Klingon.

" _Ok!_ "

McCoy held up his hands in protest, returning Vattha's glare. "Guess it's true doctors make the worst damn patients," he muttered as he returned the tricorder to the kit. "Although I know a couple command officers who'd give you a run for your money."

He paused, realizing Vattha was staring at him. He huffed out a breath, raising his hands before letting them drop to his sides. "All right, _fine._ I'm worried. Ok? Somebody has to be. Not everybody gets to be a repressed hobgoblin. Although he's right about one thing. We're breaking about every damn rule there is. Probably all get court-martialed the minute we set foot back on Terran soil—"

McCoy broke off.

So far, he'd managed to keep that particular thought out of his head, falling back on his ability to compartmentalize in a crisis. Ruminating on the fallout of their mission did nothing for him or anyone else who needed him to stay focused. He shifted his rant accordingly, to the only other thing he could think of.

"That is, if we manage to make it back at all." He shook his head and added with a bitter, mimicking laugh: "'Hey Bones, we're about to infiltrate a Klingon prison camp to rescue a bunch of apparent enemies of the state, to say nothing of the fact that we've already pissed 'em off once what with Khan taking out a whole damn patrol of 'em back in February. By the way, I've been having hallucinogenic episodes since July which are clearly linked to trauma; sorry I neglected to mention that until just now! I mean, I guess you weren't my attending physician at the time, so it hardly matters, right?' Goddamned _idiot_." He looked back at Vattha. "I suppose _you've_ had this problem before," he said, gesturing aimlessly at the medic. "That captain of yours, talk about unstoppable force. Haven't seen anybody butt heads with Jim like that since we first met Spock. Between the two of 'em we'll either save the galaxy or get every last one of us killed."

Vattha raised an eyebrow at him. It was uncannily Spock-like. All at once, the absurdity of the situation was brought home to him. Christ, he was oversharing. Might as well have been sipping bourbon out of a flask.

"God, I hope you don't speak Standard," he muttered.

"Doctor McCoy!"

Chekov's shout was all urgency, and it was all he could do not to jump right out of his skin.

"Dammit, Chekov—"

Chekov talked over him, practically vibrating in place: "The shuttle is back!"

McCoy shot to his feet and hurried after the navigator into the cockpit, leaning inside next to Scotty as Chekov assumed the navigator's seat.

"They're hailing us," Sulu said, before activating ship-to-ship.

An image of flashed up on the forward viewscreen revealing the cockpit of the shuttle, the helm and navigation seats occupied by an ashen-faced Uhura and a bald, pale Klingon man, and McCoy felt his stomach flip over.

No Rllan, no Spock, and no Jim.

"What happened?" he demanded.

"They got stuck," Uhura said, "Kirk got in a fight—somebody recognized him."

God _dammit._

"Spock and Rllan went to help him," Uhura pushed on. "We have to go back."

He was already nodding when Sulu spoke up, his voice urgent: "Wait—wait a second. You have no idea what kind of defenses they've got down there."

"This ship is not meant for combat," Chekov added, turning in his seat and looking to Scotty and McCoy in turn. "If they have even short-range missile capability, they could blow us out of the sky."

"We have to!" Uhura said forcefully. "If Rllan dies, we'll never get the coordinates of the missing ships! We can't leave without her."

The cabin went silent.

Chekov and Sulu turned in their seats, looking to Scotty. The engineer nodded, then spoke gravely: "Aye. And we can't leave without Jim and Spock either."

There was another pause as the decision sunk in, then Sulu nodded, turning back to Uhura. "How are we gonna locate them?"

Uhura's hands were flying over the shuttle's navigation console: "We can transfer a course-heading to you from the shuttle. It leads back to the cargo bay, but hopefully we'll be close enough to do a short-range scan for life forms."

McCoy managed to find his voice. "They won't try to get out the same way you did?"

"That exit's probably compromised by now." Uhura glanced up. "Scotty, we've got eight of us over here counting me. Leonard, we're gonna need you."

"Right," Scotty said. "Let's hop to it."

"We'll be ready for you," McCoy added.

As he retrieved his kit and the ship's emergency regen unit, he could feel the ship beginning to move, to change course. Relief welled suddenly in his lungs. He realized then that he'd let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

* * *

An analysis:

 _The guards become too numerous. They retreat from the yard into the prison's network of tunnels, darting left and right. He keeps track of every turn they take, charting a map in his head. He does not allow himself to_ fear _for Nyota's safety but hopes she and the others have left orbit. He and Jim will have to find another way out of Klingon space._

 _They manage for awhile to ward off guards which appear in the narrow corridors, but their phaser and disruptor have limited ammunition and battery life. Their chances of survival decrease exponentially with every passing minute, the likelihood of their capture increasing in equal measure._

 _Jim insists on leading and, as a result, is the first to fall._

 _For him, it is prolonged: superior speed and reflexes allow him to delay the same fate, but like Jim, in the end the guards are too numerous, and he is not quick enough._

 _A mere twenty minutes after they leave the yard, they are located, cornered, and shot._

No.

 _They cut across the yard instead. The distance from their location—a tall stalagmite formation pinned against the south wall—to the hall leading to the cargo bay is approximately 65.5 meters_ _. They use the chaos of the riot as cover, trading positions and fire with the Klingons on the catwalks behind them._

 _They have waited too long. A line of disruptor-wielding guards forms between them and their exit, rendering the likelihood of their survival moot. They are neither moving laterally against the line of fire, nor do they have the element of surprise as they do in the tunnels._

 _This time it is he—the taller target—who falls first. Jim follows, out of his line of vision. He does not feel regret or sorrow that he will die unable to see his friend's face. His body is in shock; emotion does not register._

 _He only hopes, now as green blood pools around him on the dusty floor, that Nyota is halfway to the Federation border._

No.

A disruptor blast, then a cloud of dust, a spray of rock in their faces. Spock raised his arm to block the larger pieces of rock; his inner eyelid took care of the rest. Jim had no such luck, ducking his head, cursing and blinking rapidly before returning to his position, peering out from behind what was now the furthest stalagmite to survey the yard.

Spock resumed his calculations, pausing when Jim grabbed his arm, pointing across the yard.

" _Look_."

Spock did. On the north side of the room, a figure in a brown hooded robe stood behind the action, wielding a disruptor rifle. The figure turned—and looked directly at them—then disappeared behind a rock formation on the other side of the room.

Jim glanced over, and Spock made the connection quickly. "Nyota has left with Rllan's crew. They will be able to escape and locate the missing ships."

Jim nodded. "Right. Good."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Jim, the likelihood that they will do so without attempting a rescue is—"

"I know, Spock." He was frowning in concentration, watching Rllan move behind the action on the other side of the room. He turned back. "What are the chances we can make it to the surface?"

"Craft 17 will be unable to locate us unless they enter the area of the magnetic shield. They will need to land in order to complete an extraction."

"Spock, they're gonna try either way. The least we can do is make it easy on 'em."

Spock opened his mouth to respond, but didn't speak: across the room, Rllan had reemerged on the other side of the rock formation. She was looking at them again—then lifting the disruptor rifle, her aim not perpendicular to the yard, in the direction of the catwalks, but parallel.

Jim frowned. "What is she—"

The blast crackled across the yard, and at the base of the ramp on the east side of the room, one of the Klingons guarding the trap door crumpled and fell.

Jim's eyebrows shot up as he looked over, and a new scenario began to form in Spock's mind.

 _Jim looks back at the trap door at the top of the ramp, then looks at him. The decision is mutual and unspoken._

 _They cut across the yard heading east, their goal to escape out the "front door," approximately 73.5 meters away. With the Klingon captain's help, the likelihood of their survival is marginally higher compared to the first two scenarios, at 6.3 percent._

 _Rllan is a good shot. She provides them with cover, picking off guard after guard on the catwalks above, clearing their path to the east entrance. One of the guards falls directly ahead of them: Jim sees before Spock does and shoves him out of the way before either of them can be felled by the body. In the split second as they run, Spock sees, to his surprise, that it is the same grizzled, gray-haired Klingon who spat on Rllan in the cargo bay. The same guard she intended to kill. But there is no time to dwell on it._

 _Against the odds, they make it to the ramp, and Rllan meets them there. Their path up to the trap door is difficult, but through a combination of the Klingon captain's aim, his training, and Jim's sheer bullheadedness, they make it. They block the door from the other side with the corpse of one of the guards. They find themselves at the base of a steep, rocky stairway. Wan, purplish light filters down from high overhead. They climb, and emerge into a blizzard._

 _On the surface, the likelihood of their survival drops again, significantly. They are still being pursued by the guards, and even if they escape into the storm, all three of them will eventually succumb from exposure. As in the tunnels, Jim will be first. Spock is less certain whether he or Rllan will be second. The point is moot. Either way, he will watch his friend die._

 _Unless, against his hope, Nyota has not left orbit. Unless she has instead directed Craft 17 back to the surface of the planet. Unless the ship emerges out of the storm, and is able to locate their signatures. Unless they are able to ward off the guards pursuing them, just long enough to board the tiny craft, break orbit, and escape from Klingon space. Unless._

Hours later, Spock would replay the escape over and over in his head, rethinking his actions, trying to bridge the gap between his mental strategy and the reality of what had happened. Attempting to discern what could and could not have been prevented. In doing so he would reflect that, yes: that was, more or less, how it happened.

He would also be told—by an ashen-faced Mr. Scott, and a stricken Ensign Chekov—that Craft 17 was able to locate their life signs almost immediately upon entering the magnetic shield, but that even with Lieutenant Sulu's skill as a pilot it took them longer than expected to land.

He would remember that it was Jim who saw the ship first through the swirling snow, only moments after emerging from the stairway, that he shouted to draw attention to it, and that this in turn drew the attention of a guard emerging from the entrance to the prison. He would recall Rllan firing at the guard, and another emerging to take his place, using his comrade's body as a shield.

He would visualize the brief battle on the surface as guards appeared from a second entrance to the north, attempting to cut them off from Craft 17. They closed in slowly, gaining ground until it became necessary to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Spock would remember only a blur of movement as two figures emerged from the ship: a final wave of defense. Lieutenant Sulu, all but throwing himself into the fray, somehow securing a knife from one of the guards. A blow that sent the helmsman sprawling back, exposed. Then Nyota sprinting forward, her ponytail a whip in the gale, a phaser in hand, aiming at the guard's head.

Even as they scrambled into Craft 17, as Sulu dove into cockpit and they lifted off the ground, disruptor fire making scorch marks on the outer hull—

Even as Doctor McCoy shouted at him to strap in, as the storm buffeted the small vessel left and right—

Even then, the image would remain burned into his retinas.

* * *

They broke orbit.

In the cockpit, Sulu didn't have to ask for the course: Chekov had their path out of Klingon space charted and ready on the navigation console. He didn't need an order from Kirk, either: in seconds, they were at maximum warp, and minutes later they were crossing the border of the Neutral Zone and reentering Federation space.

After the howl and turbulence of the planet's atmosphere, the ship felt stiflingly quiet. Sulu felt the adrenaline draining slowly from his system.

He'd lost the knife he snatched from the Klingon he'd been fighting when the guard landed a punch that knocked him on his ass; if it weren't for Uhura…

Sulu turned and looked back into the cabin. He saw the Lieutenant immediately, strapped into a seat between Spock and Rllan. Kirk was already on his feet, saying something indistinguishable to McCoy, who was glaring. Scotty caught his eye and gave him a thumbs-up. He counted the rest of the passengers: eight Klingons, all present and accounted for, including Vattha who was still strapped down in the cargo bay. He let out a breath of relief, and turned back to the viewport, hand brushing against his own ribs as he did so.

He stopped short, fingers curling around his side.

He blinked and brought his hand away from his stomach. His fingers came up bright red, slick. He blinked again. He couldn't possibly be this badly hurt. He felt nothing, hardly even a scratch, only vaguely lightheaded.

He swayed slightly in his seat and braced himself against the navigation console with his unstained hand. Memories of the last two weeks (had it only been two weeks?) swam unbidden through his mind. The thought of Demora, wailing and squirming in his arms, the thought of Ben, unshaven and yawning as he crawled into bed at four in the morning after singing her to sleep.

He couldn't possibly be this badly hurt.

"Вот дерьмо."

Sulu glanced to his right, to Chekov in the navigator's seat, his eyes huge.

" _Keptin!_ "

Then, before him, Chekov blurred into two people.

"We may have a problem," Sulu heard himself say, just as Kirk appeared at his elbow and breathed a curse of his own.

" _Bones!"_

There was two of everything now. Two Chekovs, two Kirks, two McCoys, lifting him out of the seat and lowering him to the floor. He tried to speak, but couldn't quite form words. Overhead, the lights dimmed slowly down to nothing.

* * *

The first thing out of the medkit was a pair of scissors, slicing neatly up the midline of Sulu's shirt. Bones was already frowning, but his frown deepened when he pulled away the fabric. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Didn't say a goddam thing."

Jim stared, uncomprehending, at the deep gash in Sulu's abdomen, oozing red out onto the floor. "Maybe he didn't feel it."

Bones didn't answer but shook his head. Now he was holding a tricorder, the whirr filling the tiny cockpit, and muttering to himself. "Not much internal damage…" The whirring stopped, and was replaced by a low buzz as he held a portable regenerator to Sulu's stomach. A moment later his eyes widened, and he switched back to the tricorder, then swore under his breath and looked up. "Jim. We have to get him to a medical center."

Jim stared back. "What do you mean?"

"I can't get his blood to clot. There must've been something on whatever he was cut with. If we don't get him to a proper facility soon, he's going to bleed out."

The cabin fell silent.

Sulu's unconscious figure was half in the cockpit, half out, Bones crouched next to him, Chekov still sitting on the edge of the navigator's seat, wide-eyed.

"Chekov," Jim said quietly, "what's the nearest Federation starbase?"

"Starbase 14, keptin."

"Get us there now. Maximum warp."

Scotty, from directly behind him, edging his way into the cockpit: "Jim, without Sulu we cannae fly the ship—"

Jim cut him off: " _Override it_! Find a way, Scotty."

The engineer nodded and sat at the helm, hands flying over the console.

As he snapped the order he turned from the cockpit to the main cabin, to find himself staring down the barrel of a disruptor rifle.

Rllan was standing on the other end.

She said something to Jojon in Klingon, a split second before Spock, lightning-quick, trained his disruptor on her, and Jojon pointed the edge of the particle stick at Spock's throat, like a sword. In his periphery, he saw Uhura join the standoff as well, aiming the phaser at Jojon.

He looked back at Rllan, meeting her eyes. "What are you doing?"

The Klingon captain's dark eyes flicked over Jim's shoulder at Sulu, then back to him. "We go to Kronos," she said.

"If we go to Kronos, he'll die."

"We go to Kronos," Rllan repeated.

Jim let out a slow, controlled breath through his nose. "If we go to Starbase 14, we'll get him proper medical attention. You can give the coordinates to the authorities there, and then you can go wherever you want. No one's going to keep you there. I give you my word."

"Your word means nothing to them."

From the cockpit, Scotty, tentative: "…Jim?"

Jim didn't answer, and didn't break eye contact with Rllan. "If he dies, we're not going anywhere."

" _Jim_ ," Scotty repeated.

He felt a flash of anger. "Scotty, _not now_."

"We're being hailed!"

Jim turned to the cockpit, just as an unknown voice crackled over the comm, filling the cabin:

" _Shuttlecraft, this is the USS_ Helena. We have you within firing range and will not hesitate to incapacitate your ship. You are ordered to stand down and surrender your vessel. Repeat: _stand down_."

* * *

 **A/N:** Chapter contains more depictions of physical violence, physical and verbal threats, blood and injuries.

"Вот дерьмо" is Russian for "oh shit," according to Google Translate. Feel free to let me know if you know a better translation!


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

There had been a dull, general training class on the history of Starfleet when Jim was a cadet—stuff he'd mostly already known from days spent as a kid holed up in the barn with a PADD, with nothing else to do but avoid Frank and read for hours on end. He'd nearly washed out in his first semester for skipping the class—and would have, had he not managed to sweet-talk the instructor into letting him take the final just to show he could ace it. A few details stood out: among them, the fact that the USS _Helena_ was one of the oldest ships in the fleet.

Which, Jim thought, staring across the tiny, white cell, explained why her brig was so goddamn tiny.

Where the _Enterprise_ brig was a fishbowl, cells built in a ring surrounding a central security station, the cells of the _Helena_ were in lined up in a long row, all equipped with security cameras but isolated from each other. The fourth wall of the cell was a transparent force field, the same kind as aboard the _Enterprise_ , giving them a spectacular view of the blank wall opposite them.

Seated opposite him, knees bent, her feet on the bench, Rllan was staring at the back wall, her expression oddly flat. If Jim had to put a name to it, he'd call it a glare, but it lacked heat.

He glanced around, up at the security camera above him, then back to Rllan, who hadn't moved—or spoken—in over an hour. "So," he said, his voice deafening after the silence. "Were you ever gonna give us the coordinates? Or was the plan always to hightail it back to the motherland?'

He'd been told by more than one person that he had a sarcastic streak in him—mostly by Frank, then later as a teenager, and even still as a cadet. It felt childish, pissy—but fuck it; he was pissed.

When Rllan didn't reply, he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and trying to catch her eye. "Come on. I want to know. They won't let me kill you, and they won't let you kill me, so let's talk. Like you've got better things to do than sit here and ignore me."

No answer.

"See," Jim continued, "I know you have the ship coordinates. You may not be who you say you are, but that much is true. So help me understand. Why is my helmsman—my friend, who just adopted a baby girl—in emergency surgery, fighting for his life?"

No answer.

"I understand that maybe for you there's a cultural rejection of halfway decent medical care, but I _know_ you value honor. And letting a man die who'd just helped save your life? Pretty fucking honorless if you ask me."

At that, Rllan turned slowly to look at him, her eyes narrowed. "You know nothing of honor," she said coldly. Then, looking away: "And you know nothing of me."

The cell was silent again. Jim let out a resigned breath and leaned back against the wall. He glanced back at her, at the dull, flat look in her eyes. "What's your name?" he asked.

Rllan glanced back at him.

"There's more to it. I know that much."

For a moment she seemed to consider, then turned away again. "Qowon."

"Qowon," Jim repeated. "Family name?"

He wasn't expecting much of a reply, and was surprised when Rllan spoke: "Yes. A name for traitors and weaklings." Her words were quiet, but laced with a venom he hadn't heard from her before.

He blinked. "Yeah, well…trust me, there are worse names out there." He paused, staring at her, then asked, "Where are you from?"

Rllan shot him a withering look.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Where are you from _on Kronos_."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Ok, ok." He sat up again. "I'm from an Earth town called Riverside. It's in the middle of nowhere, but it's where they build the starships. 'Bout the only thing it's got going for it. What about you?"

There was a long silence. "I am from the Capitol," Rllan said finally.

"The Capitol have a name?" Jim asked.

"No." The Klingon shook her head, staring back at the wall. "It doesn't need one."

* * *

 _Qo'noS: The Capitol_

 _2259.181_

 _As far as Rllan knows, the Capitol has never had a name._

 _As a child, during one of the worst winters in living memory, she sat on the floor in front of a roaring fire and asked her father why this was. He barked a dismissive laugh over the crackle of the flames, painfully hot and leaping a meter high. Set into the back of the fireplace, the Qowon sigil, twisted out of a Praxis steel alloy, glowed white hot._

Are you a Vulcan? _he asked,_ These questions are trivial distractions, my girl.

 _The Capitol had always been and—so she thought then—would always be. It wasn't as if there were other suitable planets, other suitable cities. It didn't need a name to distinguish it, only the title._

 _Now Rllan stands in her father's house. It is empty and dark. She has already been upstairs and throughout the house. The only body she found was that of a young servant, lost and left behind weeks ago in the initial confusion and flight. Since then, she has told by a cousin over a subspace video channel—one of the few lucky enough to make it off-planet—that the rest of the bodies have been burned: her mother, her sisters. Her aunt and uncle. Her young nephews. Everyone who was exposed in the first days, when she had been off-planet._

 _Looters have made their way through the fire room; one has tried to crack the sigil out of its place on the wall. It remains, dented and blackened by soot. As a child she might have been shocked—no, enraged—by such disrespect. But there have always been and will always be those without honor. She learned that in the months following her father's death. Former classmates and fellow sparring students would gossip to one another behind her back instead of spitting their insults to her face._

They say he died bedridden.

He had no sons, so now she's the head of house—pathetic.

They should have buried him in the ground like a human.

 _At this she feels a familiar rush of anger, not only at the weak-minded hypocrites who whispered abuses at her back, but at her father himself. Requm of House Qowon was a proud traditionalist. It is no surprise he said nothing about his illness until it was long too late. Once as a teenager at the dinner table she brought up the notion of private honor: a concept being thrown around more and more, by drunken, fiery-eyed students in dark Capitol taverns. He openly mocked her._

 _A warrior puts down his sword and opens a restaurant stand, spending his days hauling pallets in a cramped back room, he said scornfully. Private honor, indeed._

 _Sometime in the first year after his death, Rllan began to wonder what might have been if he had sought help—perhaps in Vulcan medicine, or even human medicine. An admission of weakness, to be sure. And over months of quiet, secretive research, she learned that his chances of survival would have been slim regardless. But there was a small chance he could have been living now. Doubtless a subject of derision, but still the head of a great House, still capable of a good fight._

 _Rllan has long since made peace with the fact that she can no longer recall her father's face, but now she could still hear his voice, his short bark of a laugh, as she stares at the blackened fireplace, her breath fogging the faceplate of her breathing mask._

 _Footsteps behind her._

 _She spins around and assumes a fighting stance, but it is only Vattha, her second in command. He too wears a mask strapped over his face, his brow knitted, urgent._

" _We have to go now. They're coming."_

 _Rllan gives a curt nod, and Vattha disappears outside. She turns back to the fire room._

 _In her hand is a fuel tank, ripped out of a flitter down the road. It's badly damaged and unlikely to fly again, so she has no qualms about taking what isn't hers. These are desperate days. The rules have changed._

 _She recalls her father's last days, how he once misinterpreted a passing comment about funeral proceedings, and, in a fit of delirium and rage, snarled at her that he wouldn't be denied a pyre._

 _From her belt she draws a short knife and jabs it into the fuel tank, tipping it out before her and pouring the pungent liquid out onto the floor._

 _She works her way backwards to the main entry. When she is finished she drops the tank by the door and makes her way out onto the landing. Vattha is waiting at the edge of the road, impatient._

 _Rllan turns back to the house. She reaches into her pocket and extracts a flashbomb. They are the weapons of the weak these days—hardly lethal, but useful for warding off looters or worse. Taking a step back, she flicks it at the trail of flitter fuel left in the main entry. After the initial blaze that illuminates the doorway, she watches the flames rip their way down the hall._

 _Wordlessly she rejoins Vattha at the edge of the road, where he growls into the comm at his wrist: "Now."_

 _Gradually, she feels the pull of the transporter beam returning them to her ship. As the world begins to dematerialize around her, Rllan watches her father's house burn._

* * *

 _2256.164, Early Winter_

 _After the funeral, she makes herself scarce. It is her right, after all—as the head of her House—to appear and disappear as she chooses._

 _She has an endless list of obligations: she must select the most trusted members of her crew—a mere twenty-four of three-hundred—to form the ranks of her new ship, the warbird_ SaQuy _, while her former vessel will come under the command of a new captain. She must refamiliarize herself with the affairs of her House: cousins to appease, sisters, marriages and alliances… She must select aides for her work in the Council chambers and decide what to do with her father's estate._

 _She finds herself on the edge of the city. There is a cliff outcropping overlooking the lakes to the north: vast, artificial, and now heavily polluted after years of disuse. Flame-orange algae blooms spread beneath the surface of the thin ice. It is early winter, not yet so cold that waiting for nightfall will be dangerous. She sits on a patch of scrubby grass and dangles her legs over the cliff._

 _The distinctive electric buzz of a second flitter reaches her ears, drawing nearer and nearer until its driver cuts the engine, and footsteps approach from behind. She makes no move to leave: only one other Klingon knows this place and would choose to come here._

 _"You look like shit."_

 _Tlreth sits beside her, mirroring her and dangling his feet over the edge as well_ _._

 _It's been months since she's seen him, and he looks the same as ever: as short and stocky as he was when they were teenagers, bright-eyed, his hair a tangled cloud, but never worse for the wear. He elbows her in the bicep and holds out a bottle of firewine, the price label scratched out._

 _She glances over, raises an eyebrow. "No Romulan ale?"_

" _I'll never understand why you like that rat's piss." He grins. "Seemed like you could use something stronger."_

 _She accepts the bottle and takes a swig. The firewine burns in her throat. "You're the one who introduced me to that rat's piss. You sell it to half the Council."_

 _"Yes, and I'm forever grateful for their business."_

 _Rllan laughs, and it's almost a foreign sound, it's been so long. She punches Tlreth's arm and hands the bottle back, watches him take a drink out of the corner of her eye._

 _In her periphery, she sees him glance her over, eyeing the heavy, steel, jeweled necklace that rests around her collar. She is still wearing her familial robes, the colors of the crest stitched along the seams, and the crest itself across her chest._

 _When he speaks again, he's more subdued: "I'm sorry."_

 _Rllan is silent for a moment. There are light clouds clinging to the foothills on the horizon beyond the sprawl of slums and industrial factories. The mountains behind them are obscured._

 _She is sorry too—for the last few days, the last few weeks. The last few years. She does not say so. Instead she says: "He burned well."_

" _Honorably," Tlreth adds._

 _Rllan snorts—as if anyone could burn dishonorably._

" _You know what I mean. It was…what he had left."_

 _It's true, and she makes no attempt to argue the point. She takes another swig of firewine. "This won't be the end of it, you know. This is only the beginning."_

" _I know."_

 _She glances at him and asks, dryly, "Sure you still want to be connected to the Great House of Qowon?"_

 _Tlreth laughs, an open, raucous sound that comes from the gut and echoes off the cliff walls. "Sure you still want to be connected to the Great House of Ngon? Whose forefathers fraternize with Ferengi scum?"_

 _"Whose forefathers wither and die, and leave their women in charge?" she fires back, quoting the broadside she saw amongst the news clippings of the funeral just that morning._

 _With this, they take up their favorite pastime: mocking the news reports that have mocked them all their lives, starting with the dismissal of Tlreth's father from the High Council for financing the smuggling ring his son now operates, and ending with Requm's funeral. For a few minutes, the rest of the day fades into the back of her mind. They pass the bottle back and forth until they run out of headlines to laugh at. By then Rllan is lightly buzzed, numbed to the rising winter chill, and at the same time, the conversation sobers, lapsing into silence._

 _Beside her, Tlreth lets out a last breath of mirth. He glances over. "Listen, I've got something to show you. Take your mind off things."_

 _Rllan raises an eyebrow. "Romulan ale?"_

 _He doesn't answer, but turns away to reach into his pack, turning back around with a datapad. It's plain, black, unmarked. Probably encrypted. He powers it on, taps in a code, and passes it over._

 _The screen is filled by a star chart, depicting a cross-section of space she doesn't recognize. It's utterly ordinary, except that nothing on it is labeled._

" _What is it?" she asks._

 _Tlreth grins. "That, my friend, is the best-kept secret in the galaxy. It's a new distribution meetup."_

" _Your latest petty commercial success?"_

 _Tlreth reaches over and puts two fingers on the screen, drawing them toward each other to zoom out on the image. Rllan begins to recognize constellations, anomalies…the dotted line crossing the center of the screen that makes her realize what she's looking at._

" _This is—" she breaks off, then looks up and says flatly, "You're insane."_

" _Most geniuses are."_

" _No, you're just insane."_

 _Tlreth shifts toward her, drawing his legs back onto the scrubby ground and crossing them. "Think about it. No more random patrols, no more worrying about birds of prey descending from on high, no more false registration IDs for my suppliers... I've cut the wait time in half. Do you have any idea how much money that saves me?"_

" _You've confirmed it. You are actually trying to get yourself killed."_

" _Please. Half the Council is buying from me, through one proxy or another. They couldn't kill me if I flew across the border in a Federation starship."_

 _Rllan shakes her head in disbelief. "Just be careful, all right?"_

 _Tlreth looks at her sidelong. "I will if you will."_

 _Rllan glances back at him and nods, then takes the bottle from his loose hand. After another swig she's laughing again, punching Tlreth's arm._

* * *

 _2257.336, Midsummer_

 _Chancellor Lorak looks bored._

 _Much of the Council does; the rest are either varying degrees of irritated or entertained. Few are actually watching her as she turns back to the young senator standing opposite her on the chamber floor._

 _Youth is relative in the Council: Jorwun of House Thlochav is at least ten years her senior, but he is among the youngest present, and vaguely known in the Capitol for his part in the campaigns on the outer rim._

 _He'd be a better statesman than he was a soldier, Rllan thinks, if he actually understood how to deliver an argument that made sense. She turns back to the senator and fixes him with a glare: "Six months ago on Krios Prime, a thousand infantry died because one was left untreated for Kriosan cholera. When his captain was asked why, he said their medics had run out of supplies. A mere twelve lightyears from Qo'noS!"_

 _She remembers learning about the disastrous attempt to quell the Kriosan insurrection. She was briefed with the rest of the Council before it became public knowledge. Before the day's end, she had consulted Vattha and interviewed nearly every one of the battlefield medics he was still in contact with. By the following morning, she was convinced of a plan to prevent any such military disgrace from happening again._

 _She has been attempting to argue the point ever since, at every appropriations meeting. Without fail._

" _Senator Qowon," Jorwun says, "I must remind you again that our resources are limited."_

" _Resources are not limited enough to justify our poor excuse for a colonial militia," she snaps back._

" _Additional training for battlefield medics may be useful as a minor solution on occupied colony worlds, but the funds for such training do not exist."_

" _They exist when we retrain a thousand soldiers to replace those who died because the men who sit in the Council Chambers decide they are expendable."_

 _As the words leave her mouth, Rllan feels the ripple that makes its way around the room, the glares from the upper seats. She casts her gaze around, turning in a circle and meeting the eyes of each Senator in turn. Most expressions she meets are explicitly disapproving. QuSurgh and Noluy—who have agreed with her in the past, but whose arguments rarely hold the Chamber floor—are carefully neutral. Only Loavj, among the oldest in the room, inclines his head in acknowledgement when she meets his eyes, the white cloud of his hair dipped forward._

 _To her left, Jorwun bristles. "You should be careful who you insult, Senator Qowon, and where you do it. You would weaken morale among our soldiers."_

 _Rllan turns back to him, and feels the heat of spite pooling at the base of her throat. "Morale is not what wins wars, and you are a fool to assume otherwise."_

 _Jorwun's face darkens in anger. He opens his mouth to speak, but stops when Lorak rises with the barest rustle of fabric._

" _Thank you, Senator Qowon, for your observations," the Chancellor says, and it is neither thanks nor acknowledgement, but dismissal. "They are noted." He waves a gnarled hand to signal the session's end. Jorwun sends her a final scowl before turning on his heel, blending into the crowd as the rest of the Council rises and departs._

 _It is then, as Rllan gathers her datapad and turns to leave, that she notices the man who has been standing against the wall behind Lorak's seat. It is immediately clear he has been watching her. Paying attention._

 _She recognizes him only as he steps into the light and reveals his face._

 _He looks different from how he normally appears in the newsfeeds, wearing the light formal uniform of a soldier off-duty, rather than the heavy armor intended for shipboard combat. He looks different from most Klingons as well: bald and pale-skinned, with a diminished browridge that marks him as a descendant of those exposed to the Augment virus of nearly a century ago. It almost makes him look like a human._

 _Unlike some, Rllan is not stupid enough to think this diminishes his presence. If anything, it does the opposite. His reputation is earned, not given._

 _The captain of the imperial flagship Muqtovor ducks under the metal railing to approach her on the Chamber floor, the barest of smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I hope you are as fearsome on the battlefield as you are in the Council Chambers."_

 _She draws herself up. "I would not be here otherwise."_

 _"You seem well-versed in the affairs of our medical corps."_

" _I am."_

" _A personal interest?"_

 _Rllan knows the captain by reputation, and evidently, the reverse is true. She feels herself bristle. "I am interested in the success of our armies."_

 _He laughs. "You are most…discerning with your words, Senator." He turns away from her, glancing around the now empty Council Chambers. "_ Youth's a stuff will not endure… _" he muses. "_ Twelfth Night. _Do you know the play?"_

 _"No."_

" _It is Terran." He turns to face her. "And quite ancient. One of the works of William Shakespeare. A man from a time…removed from that of humanity now. One who understood the nature of brutality."_

 _It doesn't take a scholar to understand the implication. Rllan glares at him. "If you want something of me, then get to the point."_

 _The captain smiles. "I admire your willingness to speak your mind. You are clearly free of the reserve that holds sway over the rest of these…politicians. If you'll permit me, Senator—and I mean no presumption when I say this—you have a warrior's bearing. This," he gestures around the empty chamber, "does not seem a fitting ambition."_

" _I succeeded my father on the Council," Rllan replies tightly, "as you well know."_

" _Of course. Duty and ambition do not always align. And you've certainly made an impression here. I was intrigued by your argument today, though for one so determined, you seem to lack confidence in our recruits."_

" _It is not our recruits in whom I lack confidence."_

 _He inclines his head. "Point taken. A world of difference lies between those on the battlefield, and those who sit in the Council chambers. But as your colleague Jorwun so eloquently explained, budgets are limited. And surely you believe there are some things worth preserving."_

" _At the expense of our soldiers?"_

 _He steps toward her. "Every good warrior understands the necessity of sacrifice. Without such men and women, we would not have the empire we do now."_

 _Rllan slips her PADD and stylus into the deep pocket of her robes, and looks the captain in the eye. "The more recruits we send to die over grain disputes and colonial squabbles, eventually there won't be an empire." She turns to leave, and does not bother with a farewell._

* * *

 _2259.176, Early Winter_

 _She leaves the Council chambers with a sense of grim certainty._

 _There are two copies of the report loaded onto her datapad. Not her official one, although the reports are copied there as well, but the unmarked, unregistered one she keeps on her person at all times._

 _It's a gift from Tlreth, loaded with copies of the scientists' earlier reports in minute detail, and an unmarked star chart of a cross-section of space, only half-Klingon._

 _She began keeping it on her person at all times a month ago, after the first attempt on her life. After her return to Kronos, and the disastrous Council meeting where she had waved the scientists' second report in Jorwun's face, demanding that they relay a message to the Federation, Terran raids on the Ketha province be damned. After the plague had begun to worm its way into her House, taking first her sisters, then her mother, aunt and uncle, and the cousins not lucky enough to have already left for other worlds._

 _The cohort of ten scientists have confirmed what she has thought from the beginning, and paid for it with their lives if they haven't already._

 _History will not remember them kindly, she thinks. History will not remember them at all._

 _She walks out of the Council chamber with the image of Jorwun staring directly at her, triumph in his eyes, burned into her mind's eye. Lorak above them, looking dispassionately down as he declared the report unacceptable, the scientists' work inadequate. The captain of the_ Muqtovor _, so frequently standing at Lorak's right elbow, silently observing, this time conspicuously absent._

 _Rllan knows she has stood in the Council chamber for the last time._

 _At the end of the corridor, she sees a familiar white cloud of hair, the short-statured Klingon waiting for her, clad in plain robes. He and QuSurgh were both absent from this final meeting._

 _She picks up her pace to a trot, extracting her official datapad from the deep pockets of her robes, handing it over to him. "Look at this."_

" _I have seen it." He matches her pace as she marches down the hall._

" _Then you understand what it means. They have lost all pretense of strategy. They are—"_

" _Rllan—"_

"— _weak-minded puppets of Lorak, and—"_

" _Rllan!"_

 _Rllan knows that allowing authority to talk over her has never once gone in her favor. But Loavj is so unlike the others—so uncommonly soft-spoken—that when he raises his voice she listens._

 _He grabs her sleeve, pulls her aside with surprising force, but when he looks at her, there is no anger in his eyes. "It's time."_

 _They've discussed it. Or—more accurately—Loavj, Noluy, and QuSurgh discussed it after the assassination attempt, while Rllan protested loudly._

 _She stares at the old man, shaking her head. "No."_

" _We have days at most."_

" _We can't just leave!"_

" _What do you propose to do, die? A martyr is a flare, Rllan. His impact lasts only a moment. Those who effect real change go unremembered. You know this."_

 _Deep down, she does. It doesn't mean she chooses to admit it._

 _Loavj sighs. "What family do you have left on Kronos?"_

" _None!" she says harshly. "I have no cause to run from this. I have no one to look after."_

" _Well, I do."_

 _The old man looks up at her, soft-eyed, and Rllan falls silent._

" _My daughter, and her daughters," Loavj continues, quietly. "If I die, I die. I cannot allow them to do the same."_

 _Rllan stares at him, anger still constricting her chest, her shoulders. "And what if they need you? A martyr is a flare."_

 _He glances up with a small smile. "Allow me this small hypocrisy, Rllan. I don't have much else left."_

 _That same day, she calls in a favor with Tlreth, and arranges for him to smuggle Loavj's daughter and grandchildren off-planet. Tlreth has already made countless trips out of Kronos ferrying the desperate to far-flung corners of the galaxy. Three more passengers won't make much of a difference._

 _When the Council calls for her arrest, her ship is ready and waiting in orbit. Tlreth and the_ Sovjang _are long gone._

You will be remembered with honor, _she tells Loavj, as he prepares to receive the soldiers en route to his empty estate. By the time they've finished with him, his family will be a million kilometers to the edge of the Empire._

 _In his reply, he says: Ha!_ How kind of you. Comfort an old man in his last hours.

 _Rllan gives the only answer she can:_

I will remember you _._

* * *

Movement outside the cell drew Jim's gaze. He looked up to see Uhura being led down the corridor by a pair of red-uniformed security officers. As he shot to his feet, she looked into the cell, and their eyes met, not for the first time, through a pane of glass. Jim pushed away the ripple of discomfort in the pit of his stomach and stepped forward, banging on the transparent wall with the flat of his palm.

" _Hey!_ "

Both officers kept walking, neither turning as they nudged Uhura along with them. Uhura turned to look over her shoulder as she passed, and then was gone. He turned back to where Rllan was watching him, the small, futile effort draining. He let out a frustrated breath and leaned against the transparent wall, his thoughts turning back to the Klingon captain's story.

Something struck him.

"Wait…" he frowned. "There were nine names on the report."

Rllan raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"You said there were ten scientists."

"There were. One died."

"How?" Jim asked.

Rllan laughed bitterly. "He was 'exposed to the virus.'"

"Why do you say it like that?"

Rllan looked at him and waited for his realization. It came moments later.

"They killed him," Jim said. "Because he opposed their plan." He frowned again. "That seems…counter to what you believe in."

"What do you mean?"

"To betray one of your own? To kill them for disagreeing with you? Seems…dishonorable."

Rllan stared at him. "Where you come from, is it always so easy to do the honorable thing?"

Jim didn't respond.

Rllan said nothing for a moment. Then: "He was an obstacle. There is no honor in an abyss."

* * *

 _Stardate 2259.203_

 _Tlreth drops off the map, and it takes over two weeks to find him_.

 _These days, crossing into the Neutral Zone is almost as large a risk as remaining in Klingon space. When it becomes clear Tlreth decided to take that risk for the sake of his passengers, it's not long before Rllan finds the_ Sovjang, _floating not a thousand kilometers from the Neutral Zone border._

 _To her surprise, there is a Federation vessel floating beside it._

 _Both ships are running dark. There are no life signs. In the absence of quarantine gear, she and Vattha beam over wearing repair suits._

 _Tlreth, she finds in the cockpit, his head tilted upward, his body slouched, as if he spent his last hours staring at the stars. Loavj's granddaughters are in a dirty corner of the cargo bay, huddled in their mother's arms._

 _She doesn't recognize the rest._

 _With Jojon's aid, she beams over to the Federation ship. There, too, the entire crew is dead. It isn't hard to guess what happened._

 _She learns the ship is a research vessel, and that it has been transmitting to a nearby starbase—that the record of the encounter is likely already in the hands of the Federation._

 _She's barely been there an hour when a voice crackles over the comms, speaking in Terran Standard:_

 _"_ Eratosthenes, _this is the USS_ Beichen; _we are en route to your position. Please acknowledge."_

 _The hail—unanswered—confirms her theory: Starfleet is looking for their missing ship._

 _In the back of her mind form the beginnings of a plan._

 _They move the ships to where they won't be found, and leave before Starfleet can find them._

* * *

 _Stardate 2259.206_

 _The plan is derailed three days later._

 _They are discovered at a smuggling depot on the outer rim of Klingon space, acquiring supplies they neglected to stock up on in their flight from Kronos._

 _In the space of about fifteen minutes, the depot is a cloud of fire and ash. Her crew—what remains of it—is divided. She doesn't see what happens to most of them: only that they are penned, some knocked unconscious in their attempt to resist, in the brig of the_ SaQuy _itself, imprisoned in their own vessel as another crew takes it over and sets an autopilot course to Rura Penthe._

 _She and Vattha are herded to the transporter. Minutes later, she finds herself in a dark, empty cell in the brig of the IKS_ Muqtovor. _It's not long before she receives a visit from the ship's captain._

" _Senator Qowon," he says, now in gray-black military armor, looking every bit the part the newsfeeds paint him to be. "How unfortunate we should meet under these circumstances."_

 _From her seat on the floor, she does not reply._

" _Chancellor Lorak has asked me to inform you that should you wish to recant your statements of dissent against the Empire, your sentence may be commuted to imprisonment, rather than death."_

 _It is clear the captain does not share the Chancellor's opinions. Still, Rllan does not reply. She has nothing to say to him._

 _The captain looks on her with something between admiration and pity. "I respect your stubbornness. You will die well. And I will mourn our Empire's loss."_

 _The cell is empty, but it is not true there is nothing in it. Not far above her head is an overhead light, set into the ceiling. A single bulb of reinforced glass._

 _Her boots were taken from her when she was searched, but she has been provided what passes for a meal as a prisoner of the state: thin soup in a small metal bowl._

 _She drinks the soup, and as the guard is glancing over at her to take it, hurls the bowl upward and hears it_ ping _off the glass._

 _"HEY!" the guard shouts._

 _She catches the bowl and throws it again. This time she sees cracks appear._

 _The guard fumbles with the magnetic key. Rllan throws the bowl again, and glass shards rain down around her._

 _Just as the door whirrs open, the cell goes dark._

 _She finds Vattha in a cell on the other side of the brig, and together they make their way to the shuttle bay. The_ Muqtovor _, Rllan finds, is a powerful ship but a small one, run by a mere skeleton crew. The escape is almost too easy. Almost._

 _As countless times before, Vattha again proves himself a loyal first officer._

 _As Rllan cloaks the tiny jumpship and pilots it as far from the_ Muqtovor _as she can get, there is blood on her hands again._

* * *

 _Caerus IX_

 _2259.216_

 _The energy required to maintain the cloaking device cannot be sustained by the jumpship's power capacity, and Rllan is forced to deactivate and jettison it before she is halfway to the Sol System._

 _No matter. The research facility she locates is isolated enough, and unlikely to be watching for unknown crafts approaching._

 _Rllan is alone in her consciousness. Vattha, prone and healing—barely—in the back of the ship, the human scientist curled in the fetal position by the starboard hatch._

 _The sedative worked, and has produced none of the ill-effects the human feared would manifest. Rllan isn't entirely sure what "hives" are—that particular Terran word has escaped her studies—but it sounds very much like something she remembers from long ago. One of her tiny cousins at the dining table, slurping stew into her mouth one moment, choking and gasping the next. Rllan remembers following, wide-eyed, as her aunt dragged the little girl into the study, where she produced a hypospray and plunged it into the little girl's thigh. In moments the girl was breathing again, her face flushed and darkened with exertion. Rllan's aunt saw her then, peering through the crack in the door. She reached through and hauled Rllan into the room, hissing:_ you will not speak of this _. All through the rest of dinner, the cousin didn't touch a single bite of her meal. Rllan remembers the relief in the human's eyes when she selected the other cartridge._

 _Humans see kindness in such acts of mercy. The reality is Rllan needs her alive. She can't afford to lose her as a point of leverage—not now that a new plan is so clearly coming together._

* * *

 _Mars_

 _2259.217_

 _In person, James T. Kirk looks thinner and gaunter. Angrier. Of course, in the holovid footage of the raid in the Ketha province, he is barely a flash of movement amidst the chaos, disruptor fire and swarming patrolmen dominating the scene._

 _As Kirk processes what she has just told him, Rllan's eyes flick again to the human scientist. She can see the resemblance between them now. They have the same facial structure, the same eyes._

 _Lowering the disruptor is a tactical risk. She wasn't counting on the other human—the dark-haired, belligerent one—to show up. Humans are physically weaker than Klingons, but she is still outnumbered three to one. Still: humans also seem to respond to such gestures of good faith._

" _If you help me, I will help you," she says._

" _With what?" Kirk's demeanor betrays nothing._

 _"My crew. We were attacked; they were captured. I intend to get them back."_

 _This provokes the subtlest shift in Kirk's expression: a twitch of an eyebrow, nothing more._

 _Rllan is trained enough not to show her satisfaction. The Starfleet captain is a fellow tactician, yes. But hardly an infallible one._

* * *

 _Rura Penthe_

 _2259.219_

" _I knew you would come, I knew it!"_

 _The girl is not a member of her crew. Rllan would know, and she would hardly have chosen anyone so deliberately conspicuous._

" _Who are you?"_

 _"I am Davtargh, daughter of Qob. I served Senator Noluy. Captain, you must return to Kronos."_

 _There is, Rllan realizes, something vaguely familiar about her. She can picture her in administrative robes, fuller and stronger than she is now, her cheeks hollowed, her eyes wide and fever-bright. That she is familiar, however, is no argument against the truth._

" _Kronos is dead."_

" _No! There is hope. You still have allies there."_

 _A flash of shock—and then immediate distrust. "What allies?"_

 _"Mogh_ _. Mogh is with you."_

 _Rllan feels a flash of anger at the back of her neck, deep in her chest, as she thinks of him: silent and dull-eyed in the back row of the Council chambers, while she, Loavj, QuSurgh, and Noluy took the brunt of the majority's censure, and worse. She says as much, shouts it, pinning the girl to the cave wall._

 _The girl is weak, but she pushes back anyways: "Mogh has an unborn son! He protects his House, his legacy! Can you blame him?"_

 _Rllan stops short. Her mind flits to Tlreth, Loavj's daughter and grandchildren. Her own family—sisters, cousins, parents—lost and burned._

 _When she doesn't answer right away, Davtargh wriggles slightly, and Rllan eases the pressure on her windpipe._

 _"You must return," the girl says._

" _What makes you think anything has changed?" Rllan finds herself hissing, "Lorak still heads the Council."_

" _These are dark times. Turbulent times. Turbulence affords opportunity."_

 _Rllan stares at her, silent, before saying, "You know where to find my crew."_

 _The girl nods. "Yes."_

 _Rllan releases her. "Take me to them."_

 _The idea that Mogh, of all people, could prove an ally is still in the back of her mind when a guard rounds the corner and threatens all of them—Kirk's crew and hers—with exile to the surface. She tenses as her chief engineer moves to shield her, as she reaches for the disruptor at her belt, as Kirk and his Vulcan first officer step forward._

 _Davtargh surprises her._

 _Not only with her broken Standard—_ I help you— _directed to Kirk's chief communications officer, but with her speed, her burst of strength._

 _The blow catches Rllan off-guard. She tastes blood as she bites down on her tongue, feels the shock through her skull up from her jaw. It leaves her open, vulnerable, for the girl to snatch at her waist. She hears her scream before she sees Davtargh disappear into the tunnels—and then, in the blink of an eye—she is gone._

 _A flare._

 _As Kirk pushes her forward to the unguarded elevators, the shock wears off._

 _It is then that Rllan makes her decision._

* * *

It was impossible to know how much time had passed since Rllan had started talking. There was no chronometer in sight; it could have been minutes or hours and Jim wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

The Klingon captain was leaning back against the wall now, facing him.

"That is all there is," she said.

Jim nodded. "So…up until when the _Helena_ found us, the plan was to go back to defeat Lorak? To stage a coup, with Mogh's help?"

Rllan shook her head. "The plan changed. At first, we were only trying to run. To relocate Tlreth's passengers. When we found the ships, we thought we could use them to leverage aid from the Federation and your Starfleet, but then, without my crew…" she trailed off.

She didn't need to finish the sentence. Jim nodded again. The cell was silent, until another thought occurred to him. He glanced back at Rllan. "This captain, who tracked you down and captured your crew. Who is he?"

Rllan stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"You talk about him like it's personal."

Rllan scowled. "He took my crew."

Jim shrugged. "Fair enough, but you make it sound like he's…I don't know, well-known."

"He is a renowned warrior." She spat the next bit. "Not just for his service as Lorak's attack dog."

"What's his name?"

Rllan was silent for a moment, before answering: "You would not be able to say it."

"Well, what's the closest you can get to it in Standard?"

Another pause as Rllan frowned at a point on the floor.

"…Chang," she said finally. "His name is Chang."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"I imagine Spock's not gonna want his clothes back."

Uhura looked up from her seat on the sterile, white bench, to where Leonard sat across from her. He was obviously holding back on something, wound tight: his arms crossed behind his knees, which were propped up on the bench.

Spock's dress grays, stained with Sulu's blood, had been switched out for spare uniform pants and a standard issue black undershirt, the same as Uhura and everyone else before they'd been shuffled into the brig. She hadn't seen where they'd put Spock, although she had caught Rllan's look of resignation at being shoved into a cell with Kirk, at the end of the row. Even having changed into the clean, mass-laundered uniform, Uhura could still feel the grime of the Klingon prison against her skin.

Her thoughts strayed peripherally to her own borrowed clothes, an amalgamation of Sulu's and Ben's, mostly too big for her. Her mind flashed to the image of McCoy back on Mars, holding baby Demora, scowling at the sight of her and Scotty. Then, guiltily, to the thought of Ben, poker-faced, loading the sleeping child into a baby carrier.

That, she thought, was the one good thing about this: that Sulu was in a Starfleet medical facility, not about to bleed out on the floor of a stolen cargo shuttle.

She glanced back up at Leonard. "I'm sure he has a spare," she said.

Leonard glanced at her. He looked impossibly drained, Uhura realized—not just harried and irritated like he normally was on the _Enterprise_ after a shipboard accident or an away mission gone awry landed someone needlessly in the Medbay.

"Will he?" he asked. "After this? Will any of us?"

Uhura didn't answer. She understood what he meant, and she knew when Leonard had a rant in him. She'd learned to recognize it when they'd been cadets, struggling through xenosoc together. (He'd lost it one day, well past midnight in one of the library study rooms, trying to puzzle through a section of _Macbeth_ as set on Romulus, following the schism with Vulcan. _"Fucking hell_ ," he'd sworn, putting his PADD down and dropping his head to his hands—only to apologize moments later, grumbling something about Jocelyn and Thanksgiving. It was November and he wasn't going home. The moment had passed.)

Uhura knew Leonard vented to vent: it was his way of getting thoughts out of his head, but unlike during her days as a bright-eyed first-year cadet, now it needled at her. It felt less than generous to admit that to herself, but she was in no mood to be anyone's sounding board. She'd spent plenty of time filling that role, for childhood friends, her mother, now Leonard. She'd only gotten close to one person who had never asked it of her, which was simultaneously unnerving and relieving.

Until…well.

And here her mind took her to the one place she didn't want it to go.

 _I will extract Jim. If I do not return in ten minutes, you must reconvene with the others._

Shouting at Rllan, demanding if she'd left her honor in the mines with the rest of her crew.

Transferring the course heading to Chekov and Sulu from the supply shuttle, helping Rllan's injured crewmembers onto the tiny transporter pad, the agonizing wait between each beaming.

Watching through the bow viewport, her heart in her throat, as guards closed in on Kirk, Spock, and Rllan from the north and east, as Sulu struggled to land the ship. Shouts and warnings behind her cut off by the force of the blizzard as she followed Sulu into the snow. Hard-packed ice under her feet as she caught sight of Spock, turned to her, seemingly frozen. The phaser gripped in her hands as Sulu was thrown back. In retrospect, she realized, she couldn't remember if it had been set to stun or to kill.

She realized abruptly that Leonard was staring at her, concern written across his brow. Their eyes met briefly.

Before Uhura could think of something to say— _I'm fine, just thinking_ —Leonard glanced away from her, then abruptly unwound his limbs and stood. Uhura followed his gaze to the transparent force field separating them from the adjacent hallway, where a pair of red-shirted security officers had appeared outside the cell.

One of them, a tall, rail-thin humanoid with huge, luminous eyes, tapped at the console to the right of the cell, and a narrow section of the force field disappeared like a sliding door.

"Lieutenant Uhura," the officer said, her voice distorted by a translator aide. "Please step this way."

To Uhura's right, Leonard tensed. "We have a right to legal counsel," he said immediately. "Starfleet JAG Code Section 1, paragraph—"

"In the event of a legal interrogation," the officer answered coolly, cutting him off. "This is not an interrogation."

"What is it?" Uhura asked.

"Captain Mambaso has requested your linguistic expertise."

Leonard pinned the officer with a scowl. "For what?"

"I was not advised." The officer's huge eyes narrowed in turn, almost comically cartoonish, before she turned back to Uhura. "Lieutenant."

Uhura glanced back at Leonard, partly for his benefit, partly for her own.

"You have a right to counsel," he repeated.

She knew she did. She knew the section by heart just like him—having had it drilled into her head by the same instructors at the Academy. She nodded regardless, this time mostly for Leonard's benefit, before following the officers.

She also had a right to information.

* * *

The corridors of the _Helena_ were emptier than she would have thought. She had anticipated stares, had resolved to keep her eyes forward and her head high, but few came her way. The security officers led her to a hallway not far from the brig, then into a small, sparse, gray conference room, as mundane as they came. There was a pair of officers standing across the room facing the windows, heads together: a balding, blue-shirted man, and a gold-shirted woman with a graying, frizzy braid. The woman's dark hands were clasped behind her back, and Uhura saw the three stripes on her sleeves that marked her as captain.

At the sound of the door, both officers turned.

"Lieutenant Uhura," said the captain. "Bridgette Mambaso. Please sit." She gestured at the seat in front of Uhura. She made neutral, focused eye-contact and held it. Uhura wasn't sure whether she was meant to feel intimidated. This in and of itself was more unsettling than anything.

"Captain," she replied, cautiously, and did as asked.

"This is my first officer, Matthew DiElsi," Mambaso said, glancing to her right. DiElsi looked like he was trying to come across as stern, and looked more like a caricature of a grade school teacher Uhura had once had.

Uhura nodded at him. "Commander."

DiElsi crossed his arms. "Lieutenant."

Mambaso's eyes flicked briefly over to DiElsi again, but otherwise she said nothing to him. If Uhura had to guess, they had disagreed on this meeting, and things had come down in favor of rank.

"I'm told you're well-versed in Klingon," Mambaso said.

No sense in false modesty. "I am."

"In that case, I'd like you to take a look at something for us." Mambaso reached down the table and pulled over a PADD, activating it and spinning it toward her so that she had a side-by-side view of two documents. On the left, she recognized the Klingon scientists' letter. On the right, a rough translation into Standard.

Uhura looked up at Mambaso. "Where did you get this?"

Commander DiElsi spoke up testily: "One of your Klingon passengers had a datapad on her. We were able to pull most of the files off the hard drive, and we found his little gem." He gestured at the file. "Along with a few very interesting message threads that track all the way back to the servers at the Academy. Anything you care to tell us about that?"

A second glance at the translation, and Uhura realized it was hers.

Which meant they'd found the messages she'd sent to Kirk. She drew in a deep breath.

"Matt," Mambaso said quietly over her shoulder, her tone one of warning.

Uhura glanced between them. "Captain…is this an interrogation?"

Mambaso turned back to her. "Not at this time, Lieutenant." She scrolled down the two documents to a section highlighted in yellow. "Right now, we're trying to make as much sense of this as we can. The Standard translation we found on this datapad," she met Uhura's eyes briefly, "is missing a few paragraphs."

 _What?_

To cover her surprise, Uhura looked down at the documents again. It was true, she _had_ been rushed when she'd finished the translation and sent it off to Kirk, but she hadn't missed anything. At least, nothing that wasn't…

She blinked, and zoomed in on the files.

Redacted.

The redacted sections of the letter. An uncensored version of the document, sitting there on Rllan's PADD, the whole time.

Mambaso was speaking: "Among our communications officers, we have one or two Klingon speakers, and they've taken a crack at this section, but I've been told their proficiency is a work-in-progress. I would be obliged if you would look this over."

Uhura felt herself nod. "Of course."

 _Report to the Honorable Members of the Klingon High Council_

 _Stardate 2259._ _174_

 _After nine weeks of our confinement—to call it otherwise would be dishonest—we present to you a brief summary of our findings. Those few of you who care to gain a deeper understanding may read our previous reports and examine our data in more detail. All of it remains accessible on the server and backup drives._

 _The subjects we have studied vary in age, gender, and regional origin, but the progression of the disease appears roughly the same for all. There is an average six-day incubation period before subjects begin to present symptoms. The disease appears to be airborne, as well as communicated by touch, allowing for considerable spread before subjects can be quarantined._

 _Subjects first present with severe fever, body temperature ranging from 39.8 to 41.2 degrees Celsius. Aside from causing rapid dehydration, subjects experience extreme and persistent nausea and are unable to process ingested food. Subjects report complete muscular as well as mental fatigue, rendering most unable to move or walk._

 _An average of seven days after beginning to present symptoms, subjects begin to experience progressive blindness in both eyes. By Day 9, all subjects are completely blind. Following blindness, subjects begin to present signs of delirium, and are unable to identify or comprehend their surroundings or the current stardate._

 _No subjects have responded to any kind of treatment we have provided. Most, including one of our unfortunate colleagues, have died, and those that remain will likely join the others within days of our submitting this report. Our efforts to find an effective treatment have proven fruitless._

Uhura's eyes tracked to the highlighted section, reading the original, and then the translation, over for the first time.

 _ **We do not understand the origin of this disease. We only understand what we have been told: that the first Klingons to contract it were junkers**_ [scavengers?] _ **in the Northern Provinces**_ [note, approx.] _ **who opened a sealed capsule discovered in orbit around a colony world, dead long before the disease reached the Capitol. Studying the capsule for clues has proven ineffective as well, as it is unmarked, but for the following phrase:**_

 **Iireaedhir aaithein hwaiae iunnhir aaithein.** [?]

Uhura blinked at this. She looked up at Mambaso for a reaction, but the captain merely stared at her, and she glanced back down to read the rest.

 _ **Without further information about its origins, it is useless to us.**_

 _Given such circumstances we can think of no other solution than to recommend an immediate, planetwide evacuation of uninfected persons to unaffected colony worlds and settlements, and an immediate quarantine of all known infected persons. Such an effort will take considerable resources and present considerable risk to those involved._

 _We understand that the Council refuses to accept failure, but we are running out of time. The more time we spend looking for a cure that does not exist, the larger the threat to our way of life, and to the Klingon people. With the resources available to us, there is nothing more we can do._

 _We also understand the circumstances of our capture, and that likely by the time this report is circulated, both we and our Houses will have suffered the consequences of its publication. We accept those consequences. We ask the High Council to consider the following:_

 _It is admirable to live and die with honor, but the dead are dead, and the forgotten have none._

 _This report is hereby given by:_

 _ **TeqDuq, son of woSurgh, of House Jomeh**_

 _ **Ba, son of QuDor, of House Qov**_

 _ **Azetbur, daughter of QuDor, of House Qoy**_

 _ **Lathm, daughter of Duthos, of House Vlteh**_

 _ **Lotoh, son of Chul, of House Roh**_

 _ **JuSuq, son of Vaql, of House Geyorg**_

 _ **Rew, daughter of Borl, of House TalH**_

 _ **Chupej, son of Voy, of House Druq,**_

 _ **and**_

 _ **Murgh, son of Soj, of House Qopoh**_

When Uhura looked up again, Commander DiElsi had left the room, as well as the two security officers. She and Captain Mambaso were alone.

"Well?" Mambaso asked.

"It's…" Uhura paused. "…workable."

Mambaso let out a puff of air that Uhura realized was a laugh: the captain was smiling, eyes crinkled as much in exhaustion as in amusement.

"You can be honest, Lieutenant," she said. "You're not the only Klingon expert in the galaxy, but you're probably the only one on this ship."

Uhura shook her head. "There are some minor errors, but the Klingon is mostly fine. It's this line here." She pointed it out, her finger hovering over the screen before she rotated it toward Mambaso.

 _Iireaedhir aaithein hwaiae iunnhir aaithein._

"This isn't Klingon," Uhura said. "This is Romulan."

"Romulan?" Mambaso frowned.

"Low Romulan," Uhura explained, "a vernacular dialect."

The captain's eyes—a clear, bright hazel—snapped up to Uhura's. "Can you translate it?"

She had already begun.

Pulling the PADD back to face her, Uhura tapped out a line next to the Romulan phrase, then pushed it back to the captain.

Mambaso stared at the screen and read: "Wretched acts breed wretched troubles."

"That's the closest I can get. It's…somewhat literal. Without context…" Uhura trailed off.

Mambaso was silent for a few seconds, then repeated the phrase softly, more to herself than to Uhura. She looked up. "Any idea what that could mean, Lieutenant?"

Uhura was beginning to realize why Mambaso—as collected as she presented herself—put her on edge. She reminded Uhura of one of her aunts: her mother's oldest sister, who used to watch Uhura and her older sister when both their parents still worked. A woman who only asked questions she already knew the answers to.

 _Have you done your chores?_

 _Have you finished your homework?_

 _Did you sneak a pineapple cake before supper?_

A Romulan phrase on a piece of deadly space-junk floating just off one of the Klingon colony worlds? The captain of the _Helena_ knew exactly what implications the line held.

She was asking to be proven wrong.

Uhura shook her head. "No, ma'am."

* * *

"Chang," Jim repeated, quietly.

He didn't receive an answer, and wasn't expecting one. When he glanced back up at the opposite bench, Rllan had reassumed her seated position, knees up in front of her, faced away from the shimmering force field between them and the empty corridor.

There was something familiar in the dull-eyed stare she'd fixed on the back wall, the way her limbs rested tired and loose on the bench. It took Jim a moment, but he realized he was staring at a mirror image of himself, from one of the many times he'd been held overnight at the Riverside Police Department. It hadn't been the first time, and so he wasn't scared, not even the kind of scared that was masked by anger. He remembered the officer on duty—ruddy-faced and beady-eyed though now Jim couldn't remember his name—asking with an amused grin where Jim had put all of his sarcastic comments. He remembered not feeling much of anything: not regret, nor fear, nor anger—not even passive spite. Just a heavy exhaustion. A sense of being tired, of dealing with the same asshole cops, of getting fired over and over from the same boring machine shop job. Of the looks he got on the rare occasion he actually spent any time in town. Of being George Kirk's son.

Rllan obviously had a pretty good idea of what that was like: to be someone's kid, and as far as the rest of the world was concerned, nothing else.

Except—unlike Jim—she had risen to the occasion. At every turn. No one had had to drag her off the floor of a grimy roadside bar and browbeat her into actually trying _._ There had been no _I dare you to do better_.

And now here she was, sitting in the brig of a Federation starship with less than a third of her crew, her homeworld ravaged by a virus that had killed just about everyone she knew or cared about.

Looking at her from across the cell, Jim thought he probably still had a thing or two to learn about unfairness.

A few minutes passed before a pair of security officers appeared outside the cell: one human, stocky, and curly-haired, one humanoid, with huge, luminous eyes, and a translator aide clipped to her collar. Jim glanced at Rllan as he followed them into the corridor, and she didn't look up.

* * *

Though the USS _Helena_ was the oldest ship in the fleet, the layout of ships hadn't changed very much since her maiden voyage. The security officers led Jim down a corridor he knew had to be analogous to Deck Four on the _Enterprise_ : a row of conference rooms just below the Medbay. What he wasn't expecting was to see was another four security officers emerge in an intersection between corridors, leading a black-shirted Montgomery Scott and Pavel Chekov. Scotty did a double-take before the group disappeared. It was unnerving not seeing him in uniform.

Jim glanced to the huge-eyed security officer. "Where are they taking them?"

"I have not been advised," she replied.

"This way, Captain," said the curly-haired security officer, and directed Jim through the next doorway into a vacant conference room. "Please have a seat." He gestured at the table and chair ahead.

"What, you two aren't sticking around?" Jim asked.

It was a halfhearted jab, and neither officer rose to it, disappearing back into the corridor with a pneumatic hiss. Jim didn't sit. He moved instead toward the row of small windows on the opposite wall, staring out at the blanket of stars and void.

Something tiny and unseen _pinged_ off the hull and Jim blinked, craning his neck to make the most of the window's limited plane of vision. It was then that the door swished open again behind him.

"Get a good look. We won't be here long."

Jim turned to the newcomer. The dull general training class from his first year at the Academy had also included a rundown of the current command chain. Bridgette Mambaso exactly didn't seem taller than in her picture, but she commanded the illusion of it, standing straight-backed, her hands clasped behind her.

"Captain Kirk," she said, stepping forward. "Bridgette Mambaso."

"Captain," Jim answered. "Where are we?"

Mambaso joined him at the window. As she did, a second, smaller ship passed into view, the port hull marked: _USS_ Beichen, _NCC-729_. "Last known location of the missing ships," she said.

At the edge of the window, the source of the tiny _pinging_ object crept into view: a cluster of motionless, sand-colored rocks, some mere dots against the black, others likely the size of the _Helena_ itself.

"This asteroid field hasn't been named," Mambaso continued. "The only people out here are on Starbase 14, and they're about as understaffed as you can get."

"Maybe you'll get to name it."

Jim wasn't sure if he'd intended that as sarcasm. If Mambaso interpreted it that way and took offense, she didn't show it. Instead sat at the conference table, glancing back at him and gesturing to the chair across from her.

Jim paused for a moment before walking around the table to pull out his own chair.

"You should know," Mambaso told him, "Lieutenant Sulu is out of surgery. The weapon he was stabbed with was treated with a compound to prevent dermal regeneration, so medical had to rely on some more old-fashioned methods. They're still determining how to get the toxin out of his system, but my CMO tells me he's stable."

"Thank you. I'm glad to hear that." Jim met her eyes. "And the Klingons?"

"They're stable as well. We don't understand much about their physiology, but some things seem to track. Shock, dehydration. Malnutrition." She was studying his face, as if trying to make sense of the situation by making sense of him.

 _Good luck with that_ , the annoyed part of his brain supplied.

"I assume you're aware you and your crew are not in a great position right now."

A faint laugh pushed out of him as a puff of air. "I had noticed."

Mambaso nodded evenly. "Seeing as how Command hasn't sent anyone from JAG out here yet, I'm not going to make this a grill session."

"Why am I here, then?"

"So I can tell you I've been ordered to take you and your crew back to Earth for court martial."

This time Jim laughed outright. "…No offense, Captain, but I think I could have guessed that myself."

Mambaso remained as poker-faced as ever. "I know. But that's all I've been told. Aside from being ordered to keep an eye out for the _Eratosthenes_ and the Klingon freighter. Command won't give me answers. I'd just as soon hear them from you."

"Is that why you're meeting with all of my officers separately?"

"Different divisions provide different insights."

"How do I know you're not trying to get me to talk before I get a chance to meet with JAG?"

Mambaso blinked a pair of hazel eyes as she continued to stare at him, owl-like. "If I'm going to have prisoners in my brig, I like to know why they're there. I'm sure you can relate."

 _Ignore me and you will get everyone on this ship killed._

Khan, reaching his arm through the hole in the cell's force field to let Bones take a blood sample. Teasing out strands of information— _an unexpected malfunction in your warp core_ —just enough to keep one step ahead.

Yeah. He could relate.

Jim let out a long breath before answering. "Tell me something, which I honestly don't know the answer to. Why should you believe anything I tell you?"

"I don't know," Mambaso said. "You haven't told me anything yet."

Jim paused, then spoke. "The Klingon you roomed me with in the brig? Her name's Rllan Qowon. She knows the location of the missing ships."

"How?" Mambaso asked.

"She knew the captain of the freighter."

"Did she give you any proof of this?"

"She quoted the time of the _Eratosthenes'_ last known transmission to me."

"You could have told her that," Mambaso pointed out.

"And I know that's what JAG prosecution will say, but it's the truth. Leonard McCoy will corroborate my account."

Mambaso nodded. "I'll be sure to ask him."

"There was also a document," Jim continued. "A report to the Klingon High Council describing the progression of the disease. Same as what happened on the missing ships."

Mambaso raised an eyebrow. "That isn't proof she knows where the ships are."

"It's proof she knows what happened on them," Jim countered.

"And JAG prosecution will say you could have told her that too."

Jim fell silent. After a moment he shook his head, and let out another short, bitter laugh. He looked past Mambaso at the line of small windows. More of the asteroid field was visible now, stretching out into the black, probably for hundreds of kilometers.

"How did you meet her?"

Mambaso was staring at him again.

Jim thought of Ben and Demora back on Mars. Of Winona, probably holed up in Ben and Sulu's kitchen, not sleeping. Everyone who hadn't deserved to get dragged into this. "It's a long story," he said.

"You can't elaborate on that?"

"No."

Mambaso glanced away. As she did, something flickered in her expression for the first time since she'd walked into the room. Too small to read as disappointment, but Jim could make a guess. Based on past experience, it'd be an informed one.

Mambaso was quiet for a long time. She leaned back in her chair, stared at a point of nothing on the other side of the room, before speaking again. "You know, we have something in common."

"What's that?"

Mambaso glanced at him. "Your first officer, Commander Spock. He started programming the Kobayashi Maru in what, '51, '52?"

Jim calculated silently.

Mambaso looked like she could have been about the same age as Pike. Jim didn't know anything about her career track—just that she'd been in command of the _Helena_ since at least 2255. She could have been around at the Academy. Spock had served briefly as Pike's XO—Mambaso could have known one or both of them, though Spock had never mentioned serving with her.

"When he graduated, so…about then, yeah," Jim said.

"I took that test," Mambaso told him.

Jim blinked. "When did you become captain?"

"'52. When you have seventeen years of service under your belt, they give you a little wiggle room."

 _Seventeen years of service…_

The pieces clicked abruptly together. "You weren't command track," Jim said.

Mambaso shook her head. "Operations."

"But they still made you take the test."

"Of course. All captains do." She sat up, looked back across the table at him. "I heard it got harder the longer your XO programmed it."

Jim shrugged. "Don't have much of a basis for comparison."

Mambaso's eyebrows shot up. "You've got three times more than anyone else in Starfleet." Something was tugging at the corner of her mouth, and Jim recognized it as amusement.

"The last time did seem…noticeably more difficult," he relented. "Until—you know."

Mambaso's half-smile faded as the room went quiet again. "You seem to have a lot of experience with impossible situations, Captain Kirk," she said. "It'd be better for you and your crew if you didn't put me in one."

Jim nodded. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you any more than that."

Mambaso seemed to recognize conviction when she saw it. She nodded in return and stood, turning to face the windows.

The thought occurred to Jim then, and he stared after her. "When you take us back to Earth, what will happen to the Klingons?"

Mambaso turned to face him. "They'll be escorted to the Neutral Zone and turned over to border authorities on the other side."

Jim felt his stomach plummet. "You can't do that."

Mambaso raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"They're considered traitors to the Klingon Empire. If they go back they'll be killed. All of them."

"Have they asked to defect?"

"No, but—"

"Where are they supposed to go, then? If what you say is true and they stay on our side, we look like we're harboring fugitives."

Jim found himself on his feet. "Captain, make a deal with them. Give them a shuttle and let them go. Trade that for the location of the missing ships."

Mambaso shook her head. "I'm not as certain as you they even have that information."

"But you know there's a chance they do, and a chance I'm right!" Jim moved around the table to meet the other captain. "We have to find the ships. You know that, you've seen the reports. That stuff gets loose on this side of the Neutral Zone? You can forget about court-martials and defections. None of that will matter."

Mambaso didn't respond.

Jim let out another breath. "I gave their captain my word no harm would come to them."

There was a long, long pause before Mambaso spoke again. She exhaled through her nose, then looked up and met Jim's eyes.

"You may have made a promise that you can't keep."

* * *

McCoy stood the moment Uhura came into view.

"What did they want?" he asked, as the cell's force field reactivated behind her.

She shook her head, still trying to process what she'd just learned. "Rllan had an unredacted version of the report on her datapad. They wanted me to check their translation."

"What did it say?"

Uhura looked up, met his eyes. "It referenced the patient zeroes, talked about a piece of space junk recovered near a colony world. Somebody opened it, became a carrier, went to the Capitol without realizing they were sick…" she lifted her hands and let them drop. "It spread from there."

McCoy frowned. "Space junk…"

Uhura nodded. "A sealed capsule with an inscription on it in Romulan."

McCoy blinked at her. "A bio-weapon?"

"It sure didn't come from a farm animal."

As Uhura spoke, the weight of her words came to rest somewhere in her gut. If the Romulans had that kind of weaponry—and were willing to use it on such a widespread scale—the implications were staggering. When Vulcan had been destroyed, it had been the work of a madman, one with access to technology no one in their time could have even imagined. But this…this existed _now_.

"What did it say?" McCoy asked.

The phrase made her stomach turn to repeat. "'Wretched acts breed wretched troubles.'"

"Well, that's damned poetic, isn't it."

It was, eerily so. Uhura turned over the original text in her mind. For all of the Romulan Empire's militant posturing, the Romulan language was fluid, lyrical. It lent itself to poetry.

 _Iireaedhir aaithein hwaiae iunnhir aaithein_.

Wretched acts breed wretched troubles.

Something about the translation wasn't quite right, though. There was something about the word choice. The word _breed_ , for instance, felt oddly specific. If only she had more context.

"Hang on," McCoy said, interrupting her train of thought. "The Romulans shooting a bio-weapon at the Klingons? They're hardly allies, but you'd think their primary target would be the Federation."

A flash of a memory: standing half-undressed in her dorm room back at the Academy, an equally disrobed and half-interested Gaila lounging a few feet away.

 _The strangest thing_ _, I was in the long-range sensor lab…_

 _Yeah, I thought all night._

"The _Narada_ destroyed a Klingon fleet before the Battle of Vulcan," Uhura said. "Nero was a neutral actor, but…the Klingons could have seen that as an act of aggression regardless. They could have made a counterstrike of some kind, invited an attack."

McCoy frowned. "Don't you think Starfleet would have known about something like that?"

"I don't know." Uhura shook her head. "We didn't know about this."

McCoy fell silent. He sat back down, brow furrowed, his elbows resting on his knees. Uhura started to pace the length of the cell, the buzz of the force field growing louder, and then softer with each circuit.

 _Aaithein_. Wretched.

At least, she had translated it as _wretched_ , but it was also close enough to the Romulan word for _abnormal_. Its use implied spitefulness, anger: _wretched_ fit. But for some reason Uhura couldn't place, it didn't quite cover it.

 _Iireaedhir aaithein hwaiae iunnhir aaithein_.

Wretched acts breed wretched troubles.

 _Wretched acts…wretched acts…_

 _Wretched actions…wretched deeds…_

Wretched deeds?

Uhura blinked.

Not wretched.

 _Unnatural._

Like a woman electrified, she spun around to face McCoy.

The doctor jumped. "What?"

" _Iireaedhir aaithein hwaiae iunnhir aaithein_ ," Uhura recited. "Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles."

McCoy's brow knitted in confusion. "What?"

"'Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles'?" she repeated.

"I don't un—"

" _Leonard._ That's not Romulan."

For a split second, McCoy stared at her, dumbfounded. Then his eyes widened. "Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles—"

"Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets," Uhura jumped in, and together they finished the line: "More needs she the divine than the physician."

McCoy was now on his feet as well, his mouth hanging open. "I'll be _damned_."

Then, without warning, a familiar klaxon started to blare from an unseen speaker, and the cell was plunged into red-tinged darkness.

* * *

 **A/N** : "Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician." -Macbeth, Act V, Scene I


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N** : Potentially rough content ahead; scroll to the end if you'd like a heads-up about what's to come!

* * *

Chapter 14

When the red alert signal went off, Mambaso didn't spare Jim another glance. She darted to the nearest wall console:

" _Captain to the bridge, what's happening?_ "

An unknown voice shouted back: " _Klingon bird of prey—it just uncloaked off the port bow—_ "

Without warning, both of them were on the floor, knocked off their feet as a violent jolt shuddered through the ship. The lights flickered dangerously overhead. Jim shook his head and pushed himself upright, his heart somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.

 _Chang_.

To his left, Mambaso was already making her way back to the wall console. The conference room door hissed open and Jim stumbled through after her. The hallway, nearly empty what felt like mere minutes ago, was now full of red, blue, and gold-uniformed personnel. Jim found himself face-to-face with the curly-haired and huge-eyed security officers from before.

"Report to your stations!" Mambaso barked at them.

The officers cast an uncertain glance at Jim, then at each other.

"Move!" Mambaso shouted, and both saluted and disappeared down the corridor without a second glance. She then turned to Jim. "Make yourself useful or go back to the brig."

She didn't wait for a response. She started running, single-minded, in the direction of the bridge. There wasn't time to think about the decision. Jim only knew he wasn't about to spend a battle sitting around in a prison cell.

Not half a minute later, they rounded a corner and ran straight into Chekov, Scotty, four security officers, and a balding, blue-shirted officer Jim didn't recognize.

" _Keptin!_ " Chekov shouted, at the same time that the blue-shirted officer turned to Mambaso.

"Captain, what the hell's going on?" he demanded. There were double-stripes on his sleeve marking his rank.

"Klingon warbird," Mambaso said. "What are you doing with these two?"

"Getting them back to the brig, they were—"

Another blast juddered through the ship, and the lights flickered again. Just under the blare of the red alert klaxon he could hear the chirp of a communicator. Mambaso flipped hers open to an unknown voice, calm but strained:

" _Helm to Captain Mambaso_."

"Mambaso here, what's going on?"

" _The_ Beichen _has been hit; Captain Holcomb is asking to speak to you_."

"Put him through."

A new voice, this time male, shouting over the crackle of static: " _Bridgette!_ "

"What do you need, Al?"

" _We've sustained warp core damage; the_ Beichen _doesn't have much longer. I've issued general evacuation orders, but that ship is taking out everything that moves. If we put a shuttle outside, it's gone! We have to get out of here, but there's nowhere to go_."

"Start sending people over to us; we'll try to hold her off."

" _We—_ " There was a distant crash, an electric crackle, and the sounds of muffled shouting. " _—we've lost beaming capability. We took a hit that cut off power to the transporter_."

Scotty shot a glance at Jim, eyes wide.

"Can you reroute power?" Mambaso asked.

" _No, there's a—"_ Another crash, a burst of static. "— _hull breach in the adjacent corridor that's preventing repairs—_ "

Before Captain Holcomb could get another word in, Scotty darted forward, grabbing the communicator with Mambaso's hand still around it. Two of the security officers lunged at him, gripping his upper arms to yank him back, but not before Scotty shouted: "Are the warp coils still intact?"

" _Who the hell is that_?"

"Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer USS _Enterprise_. Answer the bloody question!"

" _I_ —" Holcomb broke off. For a few moments there was nothing, then the communicator buzzed to life again: " _Yes, they're still intact_."

Scotty released his death grip on the communicator, and the security officers pulled him away from Captain Mambaso. He looked directly at Jim, and said, "I can fix that."

Jim stared at him. He'd seen the look on Scotty's face before: wide-eyed, brimming with energy like a racing dog on a leash—yet focused. Channeling all of himself into a single task, and waiting for the green light to get it done.

Jim turned to Captain Mambaso. "Send us."

When Mambaso didn't answer right away, the blue-shirted officer gaped. " _Captain!_ "

"You have nothing to lose," Jim said.

A beat more, then Mambaso nodded. "Go."

* * *

Pavel Chekov was running.

Just ahead of him was the captain, behind him Mr. Scott. Ahead of all of them, weaving a path through the corridors and leading them to the flight deck, was a lone security officer, one of the four who had escorted them to the meeting room to speak with First Officer DiElsi.

All around them, crewmembers were rushing back and forth to their posts, and more than once Chekov had to dart to one side or another to avoid crashing into someone—the kind of chaos of battle he rarely saw from his seat at the navigator's console on the _Enterprise_ bridge. Every so often another blast from the Klingons would _judder_ through the ship, absorbed and distributed by the shields. He was used to being able to _see_ the enemy through the forward viewport; he wasn't used to not knowing when the blasts would come. He became acutely aware of his heart pounding in his chest, the rhythm of his breath as he ran.

As they wound their way past the cargo bay Jeffries tubes, past the auxiliary control room and down into the catwalks of Engineering, Chekov realized what he was seeing was a controlled kind of chaos: engineers making repairs to fried equipment, white-uniformed medics ferrying the injured to Medbay, logistics personnel monitoring shield capacity, weapons banks, life support.

Chekov focused ahead of him and put another burst of speed into his steps.

What felt like far too long after they'd first started running, the security officer turned a corner, and a pair of large, gray doors loomed into view, then parted before them to reveal the expanse of the aft flight deck. Beyond the rows of shuttles was the airlock seal, and beyond that, the transparent dome of the hangar doors.

"This way!" shouted the security officer, directing them to the nearest shuttle. "Take that one. Don't go yet." He darted away, out of sight.

"We're going in _that_?" gasped a voice.

Chekov turned to where Mr. Scott was bent over his knees, wheezing.

The captain looked at Mr. Scott and then Chekov in turn. "I'll get us over there," he answered. "Scotty, what's the plan once we do?"

The engineer sucked in a breath and straightened up. "Ok. We're gonna borrow reserve energy from the warp coils to power a patch for the hull breach, which will _then_ allow us to reroute power from the from the auxiliary grid to the transporter."

Kirk frowned at him. "Will that work if the warp core is damaged?"

"Temporarily," Chekov spoke up, nodding. "The coils themselves are likely to still be operational."

"So we'll have as much time as the core will give us," Mr. Scott said.

Kirk nodded. "What do you need when we're over there?"

The engineer jerked a thumb over at Chekov: "I could use the wee man here, but otherwise we've gotta get people over to the transporter room in the first place."

"Ok. That'll be me, then."

"Right. There's just one _wee_ thing though, Captain." Mr. Scott pinched his thumb and forefinger together.

Kirk looked warily at him. "What?"

"Once we start an energy drain on the warp core, some of the systems that keep the core functional, and, you know, not _imploding_ from lack of maintenance, are going to—well—stop working."

"…The core's gonna fail faster," the captain concluded.

"Aye, that's it."

"Fantastic."

At that moment the security officer returned, holding out three standard-issue communicators. "The _Helena_ will cover you on the way over. If you need help when you're over there, hail the bridge; it's coded as the emergency frequency."

The captain nodded to him. "Tell the transporter room to be ready for us."

In the shuttle, Mr. Scott strapped himself into a seat in the passenger cabin, the captain assumed the helm seat, and Chekov his usual place at navigation.

Hangar control over the comms: " _Shuttlecraft Hopper, you are cleared for takeoff. Good luck_."

Kirk was already disengaging the inertial dampeners. "Roger that."

Chekov stared ahead at the yawning airlock ahead, and tried not to think of how this felt just like before—Mr. Scott, the captain, and him, sprinting across catwalks as artificial gravity failed and the _Enterprise_ Engineering Bay crumbled around them. Slipping as the ship tilted up at a fifty-degree angle, and sliding past the manual override switch. Only flipping it to reroute power to the warp core minutes later than he'd meant to. Discovering not long after what Mr. Scott had witnessed, and what had become of the captain.

"Chekov, you all right?"

Chekov started, and turned to see Kirk staring at him. The ensign swallowed and pushed down on the churning in his stomach. "Aye, sir."

"Hold on." Kirk fired the engines, and the shuttle lifted into the air.

* * *

Without the blare of the red alert klaxons, the expanse of void and stars outside the _Helena_ was a bright, nightmarish vacuum. The _Beichen_ floated only a few kilometers off the _Helena_ 's starboard bow. Even from a distance, inside the shuttle, Jim, Scotty, and Chekov could see multiple hull breaches scattered from bow to stern, venting oxygen into the black. Part of the _NCC-729_ had been scraped off the port hull.

They sailed under the _Helena_ 's starboard nacelle into the space between the ships and the bird of prey loomed into view: a smaller vessel than the _Helena_ , but alien, winged, menacing. The warbird was trading fire with the _Helena_ : silent streaks of red and green, the white-yellow explosions of photon torpedoes against reinforced plasma shields. Beyond the Klingon ship, the asteroid field, rock and dust displaced by the _Helena_ 's fire.

As the shuttle weaved across the starscape, barely noticed among the rubble from the _Beichen_ , Captain Mambaso made good on her word. When a stray torpedo from the warbird came within meters of the shuttle, a streak of red phaser fire reached it first, rocking the shuttle from the force of the proximity detonation. It flew on.

As a small-crew research vessel, the _Beichen_ had no independent shuttlecraft, and no hangar deck. The shuttlecraft _Hopper_ disappeared beneath the ship, emerging on the starboard side, just outside a maintenance airlock as close as they could get to Engineering.

* * *

Some of the ship's sensors must have still been working, because when Jim, Chekov, and Scotty leapt off the maintenance airlock platform and into the adjacent corridor, they were met by a figure in blue, with three stripes on his sleeve.

At first glance Captain Holcomb looked to be Captain Mambaso's peer. A moment later, Jim realized that what he'd mistaken for gray streaking the man's dark hair and beard was really ash. Something dark and liquid had trickled down in front of his ear from a cut just under his temple, black in the low emergency lighting. A deafening, mechanical grinding noise made it impossible to hear. Holcomb shouted over it: "Are you Kirk?"

Jim nodded and shouted back: "Yes."

"Holcomb," the captain answered, looking behind Jim at Scotty and Chekov. "What's the plan here?"

A jolt ran through the ship, and the floor tipped toward starboard, sending the four of them crashing into the wall. A plume of dust and smoke exploded from an open door up the hall, engulfing them as quickly as it had emerged.

"Captain, she hasn't got long—point us to Engineering and we'll get your transport up and running right quick!" Scotty managed, his sleeve over his mouth, and Holcomb nodded, pointing down an adjacent hallway. "First left," he coughed.

Scotty started running without a backward glance, Chekov on his heels.

Jim grabbed Holcomb by the shoulder. "We have to get everyone to the transporter room, or as close as they can get 'till Scotty can fix the hull breach. How many do you have on board?"

"After this? God only knows. We have a crew of fifty-five counting me."

"Where are they?"

Holcomb was wild-eyed, "Trying to keep her from falling apart! They're scattershot all over the damn ship; I wasn't even on the bridge when this happened—"

"Engineering, Medical, _where?"_ Jim shouted.

Holcomb seemed to snap out of it. "Medical," he said, "the labs." He pointed up the corridor toward the bow of the ship.

"Let's go."

* * *

 **Starfleet Headquarters**

 **Office of the Judge Advocate General**

Internal Investigation on Events of 2259.187 – 2259.222 involving USS Enterprise crewmembers Capt. J. Kirk, First Officer S.T. Spock, Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy, Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott, Lt. N. Uhura, Lt. H. Sulu, and Ens. P. Chekov, first in [redacted] and subsequently in [redacted].

Requisition Files: Batch 2

[Excerpt: Timeline of Events: Evacuation of USS _Beichen_ personnel to USS _Helena_ , 2259.219 [time] – 2259.219 [time], page 9]

[Time]: Cpt. A. Holcomb makes the following ship-wide announcement from USS _Beichen_ Console 15, Deck 4

 _Attention all hands: repairs are underway on the ship's transporter. Report to your division officer on duty and get to Deck 3 port corridor to prepare for evacuation to the_ Helena. _Holcomb out._

* * *

Put bluntly, they had said at the Academy, any ship-wide evacuation was a logistical nightmare. Even in huge-scale starship battles—clashes between birds of prey, Constitution-class Federation ships and the like—ship-wide evacuations were rare, the absolute last resort of any captain worth their salt. No matter how many safety protocols were hammered into the heads of bright-eyed cadets, no matter how many drills were conducted over the course of a long-term assignment, the reality of moving fifty to eight-hundred souls from one location to another in a real-life crisis was, and had always been, messy.

There would be a list of things that stood out to Jim after it was over: the echo of Holcomb's voice over the ship-wide channel as he gave the order to abandon ship. The sight of the _Beichen_ 's CMO through the wide window of one of the Medbay operating theaters: a tiny woman with a jet-black bun, barely taller than Keenser, standing on a stepstool and wrist-deep in a patient's stomach. The way she fired back at Holcomb that she could save this man, and that she wasn't leaving the ship until the patient could as well.

The burst of energy that hummed through the ship, heralding Scotty's triumphant shout over the tinny comm speaker, announcing that the patch for the hull breach was secure, and the transporter was operational. Making their way to the Deck 3 corridor to count off groups of seven, the maximum capacity of the transporter.

As personnel arrived with them, they counted off groups of seven, the max capacity of the transporter, sending them across the patched hull breach. They made their way tentatively: it looked like a soap bubble, shining and oily, thin streaks of refracted rainbow that distorted the stars behind it. Just around the corner, the sound of Chekov's voice and transporter chimes: _Six, seven—go!_ A lone straggler: an ensign who looked on the verge of tears, who they had to near-manhandle onto the pad.

As the _Beichen_ shook around them, Jim held fast to the safety railing. The corridor ahead of them was opaque with smoke. He scanned it for signs of movement. "Who's left?" he shouted to Holcomb. There were four: the CMO, her patient, and two other Medbay personnel.

An agonizing minute spent trying to hail Medbay over the comms—then Holcomb's shout, as three figures emerged from the smoke, barreling past: the patient, strapped to a wheelchair with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his head, pushed by a scrub-clad surgeon. Holcomb's tiny CMO was sprinting alongside them, a whirring tricorder gripped in her hand. A last figure—a white-uniformed medic—limped along behind the others, pressing against the wall for support; Holcomb ran to her. A bubble of relief grew in Jim's stomach with the realization that these were the last: they had everyone.

 _They had everyone._

* * *

A blast rocked the ship, and Jim felt himself stagger, felt his head connect with the edge of the wall.

A flash of fire in the distance, a low rumble underfoot. It felt suddenly like there was something flitting at the edges of his vision, making it hard to focus on the passage ahead. He could feel his breath growing shallow—was it the smoke?—and his lungs starting to constrict. He took another step and stumbled when a wave of dizziness crashed over him, catching himself on the wall. It was hot to the touch—something was burning on the other side.

Then a flash of something above him: a glare of bright light on glass, a face looming over him, dark eyes spilling over with tears—

A rush of hot, dark fear flooded at the back of his head and flowed down Jim's spine.

 _No—not now, not—_

"Kirk!"

Jim looked up. A figure was silhouetted in the corridor before him: it stepped closer and his vision focused in on Captain Holcomb, his mouth tight with concern, the medic leaning on him for support.

"You all right?" Holcomb asked.

Jim nodded.

He blinked, clearing his head: he was—as much as was possible under the circumstances. He was in his right mind. He was _fine._ He was not under the warp containment glass on the _Enterprise_ , he was aboard the USS _Beichen_ , under fire from a Klingon bird of prey, assisting in a rescue mission. He was face-to-face with Captain Alan Holcomb and an unknown member of Starfleet medical: the last two crewmembers to be beamed to safety aboard the _Helena_. He was about to finish the job.

He took a step forward—

—and the corridor exploded around him.

For a few seconds, his vision was black. Then he opened his eyes, and found his ears were ringing. There was a weight on top of his legs. For a moment he was pinned, but then suddenly the weight was gone, as if someone had lifted it away. He pushed himself upright and saw the medic scrambling on her knees, moving away from him—no, moving towards...

The medic's mouth was moving. Jim couldn't hear, but he could see what she was saying, over and over: _Captain, Captain._

He stumbled to his feet and saw what she was looking at. In the middle of the hallway was a dented pneumatic door, likely ripped off its track in the explosion. Beneath it, a motionless figure.

Holcomb's eyes were wide and open. There was a pool of blood under his head. The medic was taking his pulse, switching between his wrist and his neck, finding nothing.

"Come on."

Jim didn't hear himself speak, but he felt himself form the words as he pulled the medic to her feet. " _Come on!_ You have to get out of here!"

A moment's hesitation, and then she seemed to snap out of it: she turned, following Jim into the transporter room.

The door slid—slammed—shut behind them just as they ran through, sealing off the corridor. Across the room, Chekov looked up from the transport console. Scotty was wedged underneath it, legs askew, his face obscured by the edge of the table. He was shouting over a growing electric hum:

"That'll hold her a few more minutes!"

The medic's eyes flashed wide at this. Jim pushed her toward the transport pad, as Scotty reemerged, his thinning hairline bristly with soot. He turned to Chekov, all urgency: "Let's go, lad—"

He didn't get to finish his sentence.

Without warning, a jolt shuddered through the ship; the room tilted heavily to starboard. From overhead, a sickening creak of metal, a shower of sparks and plastic dust. All three of them looked up; Chekov was the quickest to see the jagged-edged ceiling panel above them, tearing away from the ceiling. The ensign stepped forward and shoved hard; Jim and Scotty stumbled back and the panel crashed in the center of the room, dividing it in two.

In the seconds that followed, Jim understood his mistake.

Chekov was staring directly at him. He swallowed, his eyes wide with fear—and then regret.

" _Chekov_ —"

Jim never got the words out.

The ensign had a phaser strapped to his hip. God only knew where he'd gotten it, and it didn't matter. The blast knocked Jim backwards off his feet, and he landed hard on the transport pad. The wind rushed out of his lungs, his head cracked against the floor, and—

 _And Spock was staring down at him, his fingers splayed over the glass, his eyes running over._

I want you to know why I couldn't let you die _._ Why I went back for you.

There was smoke and fire, and white-gold rings were encircling his body. The last thing he saw was a blinding explosion, and against it, a skinny, curly-haired silhouette.

* * *

 **A/N** : Chapter contains an attack on the USS Helena and Beichen by another ship, and subsequent descriptions of blood and injuries, and ends with a main character in...well...serious mortal peril. *hides*


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

 **Starfleet Headquarters**

 **Office of the Judge Advocate General**

Internal Investigation on Events of 2259.216 – 2259.222 involving USS _Enterprise_ crewmembers Capt. J. Kirk, First Officer S.T. Spock, Lt. Cmdr. L. McCoy, Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott, Lt. N. Uhura, Lt. H. Sulu, and Ens. P. Chekov, first in [redacted] and subsequently in [redacted].

 _Requisition Files: Batch 8_

[Testimony from Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineering Officer, USS _Enterprise_ , pp. 29-30]

[JAG Representative]: Mr. Scott. … _Mr. Scott._

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Aye, sir.

[JAG Representative]: Are you having difficulty concentrating?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: No, sir. No, just—m' just a wee bit—

[JAG Representative]: Please continue your account.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: …Right.

[JAG Representative]: After you and Captain Kirk were beamed back to the _Helena_ …?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: …Chekov was able to hail the bridge, briefly. He said the _Beichen_ 's transporter was compromised again and he was trying to get to a more stable part of the ship. And then Captain Mambaso told him to—

[JAG Representative]: We have the record of those transmissions, Mr. Scott.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Right. Um.

 _Let the record reflect that at this point Lt. Cmdr. Scott paused for a moment to take a sip of water._

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: After that, there was a…a warning to brace for proximity impact, which came a couple of moments later. And that, we learned not very long after, was a shock wave from the _Beichen_ , which had exploded.

[JAG Representative]: Due to a warp core overload.

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Yes.

[JAG Representative]: And that shock wave was enough to temporarily disable the bird of prey, allowing the _Helena_ to escape?

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Aye. The Klingons had circled about the _Helena_ and they took the brunt of the blast. Once we realized that, the _Helena_ used the delay to go to warp and get out of there.

[JAG Representative]: One further question, Mr. Scott. Would it be accurate to say that the core overload on the _Beichen_ was accelerated in part due to your strategy to transfer reserve power from the warp coils to repair a hull breach on Deck Two?

 _Let the record reflect that at this point Lt. Cmdr. Scott looks down at the glass of water in front of him and appears to laugh silently, then shake his head. There are a further fifteen seconds of silence before the following response._

[Lt. Cmdr. Scott]: Are we done here?

* * *

Security red, through a gap in a white curtain. The snatch of a long-fingered hand attached to a sleeve as a figure swayed back and forth, in and out of sight. Bright artificial light, high overhead. Jim took in a long, slow breath. His head pounded, his sinuses burned. His chest _ached_.

A rustle to his left, a low murmur of relief: "Oh god."

 _Don't be so melodramatic_ , he thought, in a voice that wasn't his own.

To his right, a hand pulled back the curtain and revealed a blue-uniformed officer, a single stripe around the cuff of her sleeves. She had vibrant, meadow-green eyes, but they were shadowed, and she held herself uncomfortably still, elbows bent and unmoving. One arm extended out with a tricorder, scanning over Jim's forehead.

"Captain Kirk," she said, her gaze fixed on the device. "I'm Dr. Correlle. Can I ask you a few questions?"

Jim meant to say _yes_ , but what came out of his mouth was, "Where am I?"

"You're in the auxiliary Medbay on the USS _Helena_. Can I ask you a few questions?" Correlle repeated.

Jim nodded.

"Are you experiencing any nausea or dizziness?"

"…No."

"Ringing ears? Abnormalities in your vision?"

"No."

"Can you tell me the current stardate?"

"2259…" he hesitated for a moment, calculating. "Point 219."

"All right." The tricorder's whirring stopped. Correlle put her arm down, and finally looked at him. "You've been stunned with a phaser," she said. "Has that ever happened to you before?"

"N—" Jim started to say, but broke off, remembering a long-ago night in Iowa City. Some asshole in a bar with a temper and a chip on his shoulder about strangers, and nineteen-year-old Jim, with a chip on his shoulder about just about everything. The bartender had kept a phaser rifle behind the counter. "…Yes."

"Also at close range?"

"Yes."

The doctor nodded, businesslike. "Then you'll know you'll most likely have some persistent bruising where you were hit. We'll get you a portable regen unit when one becomes available; for right now, we can give you a dose of mild painkill—"

"No." Jim shook his head, then looked up into Correlle's hooded eyes. "That's ok. Thank you."

A flicker of something in her expression, and then it was blank again. "Ok." She glanced over her shoulder through the gap in the curtains, then back at him. "We have to move you out of here in a few minutes. Medbay needs all available biobeds."

"Of course."

"If you have any memory loss or trouble concentrating, or experience any disorientation, tell the attending guard right away."

She was gone.

There was a rustle of fabric to Jim's left, a hand on his arm. He turned to see Scotty sitting in a chair in front of the biomonitor screen, staring at him. "Lad," Scotty said in hoarse relief. He was covered in soot, his thinning hair stained with it, and his hands had been wrapped for what were probably electrical burns.

"Where are we?" Jim asked.

"I don't know. We were at warp, I know that. Not in the Sol System, though. Just far away from that…" At the mention of the bird of prey he trailed off, swallowing.

"Where's Chekov?"

Scotty looked up. "Jim," he said softly.

In the silence that followed, Jim felt the shadow of short-term memory catch up to him. It broke through the fog of sedation, the dull ache at the back of his head where it had connected with the transporter pad. Chekov, lifting the phaser, eyes wide and staring. The halo of electrical sparks behind his curly hair.

He heard what Scotty meant. What he was trying to say.

Under the memory there was a faint voice in the back of his mind, pushing back, saying that it didn't make sense. Chekov—child genius, transport wizard who at age seventeen, had saved Jim's life, had snatched him straight out of the sky when anyone else would have let him fall—surely would have found a way off the ship. Or else found a way to stay alive long enough that he could have been rescued.

"The _Beichen_ …" Jim said.

Scotty shook his head. "There was a proximity blast. It's gone."

Jim realized Scotty's eyes were red-rimmed, sunken. The engineer swallowed and looked away. "We have to write his mum and da," he said. After a moment, his head dropped to his hands.

 _We_.

It was Jim's responsibility as captain, to write to the families of the dead under his command. Up until last February, he'd counted himself lucky—or maybe just _special—_ that he'd never had to do it, never lost anyone on his watch. Up until that point, there had been a handful of near scrapes during the shakedown cruise. After each one he'd gone to bed with a dogged superstition at the back of his mind that if he let it happen once, it wouldn't ever stop. Once one crewmember was lost, others would quickly follow.

He thought of Chekov in Engineering, peering at a console over Scotty's shoulder and nodding excitedly, a week before they'd been sent to Nibiru. Then earlier, a month into the shakedown cruise, glum and drinking alone in the rec room a week after his birthday. He'd talked morosely—almost childishly—to Jim about his father, who thought eighteen was too young to be navigating the stars as an officer of Starfleet.

Did Chekov have siblings? Living grandparents?

 _Proximity blast_ , Scotty had said. Meaning there would be no body.

Jim stared at his hands, his mind overtaken by static.

He was pulled back moments—or maybe it had been minutes—later by the whirr of automatic doors, and the sudden staccato sounds of an argument in progress.

Someone was protesting: "Ma'am, if you aren't injured, you can't—I've been ordered to—"

There was a grunt of pain, and at the same time, a familiar shout: " _Kirk!_ "

Scotty's eyes snapped up to meet Jim's.

There was more shuffling, more protesting, this time at the biobed right next to them, just outside the privacy curtain. Scotty sniffed, drew his sleeve under his nose to compose himself, and pulled back the curtain.

Bones was standing there, grimacing clutching his arm above the elbow, a nurse half-coaxing, half-manhandling him onto the biobed. Behind them stood Uhura, the source of the shouting, looking around and flatly ignoring the petite, round-faced security ensign standing next to her: the source of the pleading.

"Lassie?" Scotty asked, surprised.

"Monty?" Uhura looked around him. " _Kirk_." She darted around the biobed toward them. "They said you were here. Are you all right?"

"Aye," Scotty said, darting a quick glance at Jim. He sniffed again and cleared his throat.

"What about you two?" Jim asked, pushing himself upright to face them and wincing as pain shot through his ribcage.

"I'm fine," Uhura said, "Leonard's—"

" _Fine_." Bones's face was ashen, but he interrupted all the same. "Fell when the ship got hit and landed on the damn bench."

The nurse, who looked about as at ease as the security ensign, succeeded in getting Bones to sit. "Wait here," he said, and walked quickly away toward the back of the Medbay.

"Your arm's broken," Uhura snapped at Bones.

"It's a clean break; it'll be fine inside of an hour with the bone knitter," Bones answered sharply, then turned to Jim. "Never mind that; we've got something to tell you."

The security ensign chose that moment to appear at Uhura's elbow again. "Lieutenant—"

Uhura turned to face her, eyes narrowed, voice sharp and low: "Either drag me out of here yourself or get someone else to do it, otherwise I have something to say to my captain."

The ensign shrunk visibly. A second, older security officer—the one who'd been standing outside the privacy curtain, took her by the arm and turned to Uhura. "Five minutes."

Uhura nodded and turned back to Jim. "We know where the disease is from. And maybe a way to find a cure."

Jim's eyes tracked from her to Bones. He felt _something_ thrum through him—fear, epiphany, he couldn't tell what. But it cut through the numbness, focused him.

"Tell me," Jim said.

Bones and Uhura exchanged a glance, and seemed to decide that Bones should start.

"It's a bio-weapon. From Earth," he said, quietly.

In his peripheral vision, Jim saw Scotty's mouth gape open. "Wha—" the engineer began, but Jim spoke over him:

"Explain."

"Captain Mambaso had Rllan's datapad searched," Uhura said. "They found a copy of the report on the plague. Unredacted. It said the first Klingons to contract the virus were scavengers who found a sealed capsule in one of their hauls and opened it. It had an inscription on it, written in Romulan."

"What's the connection?"

"It was a quote from _Macbeth_ , in translation," Bones told him.

"Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles," said Uhura. "Do you remember Admiral Mason, at the Academy?"

He did, but only by reputation. Pike had warned him in July before the start of classes about her infamous xenosociology course. Most cadets didn't expect it to be the kind of course used to weed out the sixty-some-odd percent of cadets destined to wash in their first year, but it was. Eliza Mason had worked for Starfleet intelligence for twenty years, then headed Starfleet Communications for nearly three decades after that. Now she taught at the Academy, refusing to retire, disabusing cadets of their delusions about interstellar diplomacy.

Mostly Jim remembered Bones falling asleep in his oatmeal at breakfast all through their first semester, mumbling about being up half the night after her lectures. Jim had been signed up to take the course in the spring, but the admiral had gone on an unexpected sabbatical.

"What does she have to do with this?" Jim said.

"You remember reading about MACO and the Romulan War?" Uhura asked.

Jim frowned. "As part of tactics and Federation history," he said, "but not in xenosoc."

"Mason was the only one who taught it that way," Bones interrupted, grimacing. The nurse had returned, and was cutting away his sleeve. "She pushed it as part of the curriculum. Command didn't like it; nobody else could get away with it."

"Toward the end of the war, MACO's arms division developed a series of bio-weapons," Uhura said. "In case the violence escalated, in case there was a call for…" she shook her head. "…mutually assured destruction. They were kept off-planet."

"But…" Jim trailed off. The history of the Romulan War was taught in Federation schools; it was a known fact that Earth and Romulus had played chicken with each other. He said as much.

"We know," Uhura told him. "But within the arms division, there was a group that was particularly…spiteful."

"Savage," Bones muttered. Beside him, the nurse realized he needed something else and disappeared again; Bones shot an annoyed look at his back.

"They would write coded messages on the capsules, with the intent that Romulans would read them," Uhura said. "Often in reference to genocide, but sometimes they were like this."

Scotty spoke up, frowning. "How is it that this isn't common knowledge?"

"Because nothing ever came of it," Uhura said. "Those weapons were never used. After the war was over, the Federation recovered and destroyed them. At least…most of them."

The pieces fell together in Jim's mind. "You think the plague is one they missed," he said.

Uhura and Bones glanced at each other.

"We're fairly certain," Uhura said.

"If we can figure out which one, we might be able to synthesize a treatment," Bones added.

"Hang on, doesn't that mean you'd have to get up close and personal with the virus?" Scotty asked, his frown deepening.

Bones nodded grimly.

"Meaning you'd either have to go to Kronos…" Jim mused.

"Not a scenario I'd bet on." Scotty crossed his arms.

"…or we'd have to get you to the missing ships."

"Yeah," Bones said.

None of them spoke. The nurse reappeared again, this time wearing gloves and holding a hypospray.

Jim turned to Uhura. "Do you think Rllan knows?" he asked, quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"You said you found out about the Romulan inscription from a document on her datapad. Could she have figured it out?"

"Don't see how," Bones grunted from the biobed as the nurse tilted his arm, searching for a vein. "Hardly seems like she would've come to us for help if that were the c— _dammit, man, that is_ not _how you administer local anesthesia for osteoregeneration!_ " The nurse jumped, and Bones let out a frustrated breath through his nose. "Give me the goddamn hypospray."

The nurse dutifully handed it over and scurried away. Bones injected himself and let out a breath, before discarding the hypo on a nearby tray.

"Is everyone else ok?" Jim asked. "Spock, Sulu? The Klingons?"

"I think they're all right," Uhura said. "Spock was still in his cell when they took us out, and Sulu was already in the main Medbay. I didn't see anyone else being taken out of the brig. What about Chekov?"

Jim felt the air leave his lungs.

Uhura's eyes widened a fraction, and she turned sharply to Scotty.

Scotty cleared his throat again. "We were on the _Beichen_ ," he said. "The three of us."

Uhura opened her mouth to speak but didn't, as if the words had caught in her throat. "…Oh, god," she said softly.

Behind her, Bones was staring at them with something like confusion and something else like guilt. "I didn't think…" he began, "I just assumed he was…"

He lapsed into speechlessness.

Jim's eyes were locked on the edge of the biobed. He needed to say something. He didn't know what.

Far away from them, the doors of the Medbay whirred open, and a group of medics and patients began to flood into the room. Dr. Correlle stood before them, directing them to different beds and calling out orders, her arms moving stiffly like an aircraft marshal assisting takeoff. The older security officer approached the group, holding out a regen vest to Jim.

"Apologies, officers," he said. "Time's up."

* * *

Bridgette Mambaso stepped into her ready room and found it, for the most part, undamaged. A little messy, now: several datapads and books had fallen off the bookshelf on the starboard wall. Her chair was overturned, but unbroken. A picture frame with a slideshow of her family—her grandparents and great aunts, her brother, his wife, their two children—had slipped from her desk and cracked where it had landed on the floor. The screen was a spiderweb, but the slideshow was still running:

Her brother and their cousin, bearded and bundled in thick coats, holding up ice-fishing rods. Her nephew—from before his transition, when he was still her second niece—holding a trowel, wearing a crown of weeds and an impossibly wide grin. She and her sister-in-law, posing with her older niece in a turquoise ball gown.

A mechanical chirp from behind her: the door chime.

Bridgette picked up the picture frame, and replaced it on her desk. "Enter."

The door slid open and Matthew DiElsi walked in holding a datapad. It was tilted away from her, almost clutched to his chest. He'd always had a terrible poker face.

"What are we looking at?" she asked. The image on the slideshow changed: an old photo, clumsy and unfocused, taken with a child's hand. It showed an empty cliff top, the silhouette of a woman watching the sunrise. Bridgette's same plume of curls, frizzy in the heat.

DiElsi sucked in a breath. "Engineering reports minor hull damage along the port side of the ship; should be fine if we can get ourselves to a spacedock for repairs, but if we get in another scrap like that—"

"I've already been briefed on structural damage," she said, quietly. "What are we looking at?"

"Captain…"

Bridgette looked up. "How many, Matt?"

DiElsi stared at her for a moment, then consulted the PADD. "For us, three dead, forty wounded, scrapes and bruises aside, five of which are critical. On the _Beichen_ , six wounded, two critical, and one dead. Captain Holcomb."

"Jesus." Bridgette let out a breath. "And the prisoners?"

"The Klingons are the same. All accounted for. Of the three _Enterprise_ crew who went over, only two came back."

"Who didn't make it?"

"The kid." DiElsi glanced at the PADD again. "Pavel Chekov. Ensign."

On the slideshow: a birthday party, in a high-rise San Francisco apartment. A friend from the Academy who stayed Earthside to do research. Everyone in costume: bright colors, funny glasses. Big hats.

"Captain," DiElsi interrupted her train of thought, "we need to go back to Earth. I'm not…I don't mean to assign blame; none of us could have seen this coming. But Command has been screaming at us to return to port, and I think it's about time we did."

Bridgette pulled her eyes away from the picture frame. She knew she looked like she was considering his words, but she was merely gathering her own. She shook her head. "That ship attacked us in Federation territory. That shows they have no regard for the Neutral Zone treaty. If we go back to Earth, it will find us and follow us, and we will have put the lives of everyone in spacedock at risk."

"Bridgette, that attack was as good as a declaration of war. At this point, staying away from spacedock might not make any difference."

"What if it's not?"

"What do you mean?"

"If it's true there's a plague on Kronos, the Klingons wouldn't be looking to ignite hostilities with us. That ship wanted something. Someone."

It was another moment before DiElsi caught on. "The Klingon captain. …Rllan."

Bridgette nodded. "Kirk said she and her crew are considered traitors."

"Do you believe him?"

"I'm more inclined to now than I was."

DiElsi stared at her. "Then what do we do?"

Bridgette was silent for a moment. "What did you learn from Spock?" she asked.

DiElsi huffed. "Not much. Didn't think Vulcans could be so tight-lipped. Every other sentence was practically a recitation of JAG protocol."

"He's smart," Bridgette said. "…and loyal."

Her eyes flicked briefly back to the image on the slideshow, the woman in front of the sunrise. She looked back at DiElsi. "I want to talk to him."

* * *

Rllan Qowon was on her feet.

The Federation alarms had _shrieked,_ like faulty machinery, like northern scavenger birds. After they had stopped, she'd paced the cell for what felt like hours, leaning hard into the front corners of the room, pressing her forehead against the force field. She'd wanted to see as far as she could down the corridor. She was pacing now. No one had walked by for a long time.

At one point, two of Kirk's crew had passed before the cell: Uhura, the one who spoke Klingon, and the doctor. The doctor's face was gray, one of his arms strangely bent. Trailing behind them was a human in a bright red shirt: supposedly a guard. She was doing a poor job, trying and failing to get Uhura's attention. Rllan had jumped forward, shouted, banged on the force field: anything to get an answer. The guard had jumped and glanced her way before disappearing from view.

If there had been anything in the cell not already attached to the floor, Rllan would have thrown it.

It was not that she didn't know. It was that she needed proof.

She strode to the back of the cell and slammed her palm against the smooth, white, wall. The blow made no mark: neither on the wall, nor on her skin.

She sensed movement behind her—or maybe she saw it in her peripheral vision—and she whirled around: Kirk, being ushered back into the cell by another, different guard. He stepped inside, and the energy field reignited behind him with an electric snap.

Rllan's first instinct was to think he'd been beaten for information. The captain looked battered, disoriented. He was moving carefully. But no—Starfleet didn't do violence to its own. They reveled in it. And Kirk was wearing some kind of medical vest. It had the same strange symbol on it as the regenerator she'd used to heal Vattha: a pair of serpents twined around the body of a bird in flight.

No. Kirk had been in battle.

"What happened?" Rllan demanded.

He looked up at her as if noticing her presence for the first time. His expression was one she hadn't seen on his face before. He was strangely blank.

"…Chang," he said, and sat heavily, looking at the floor.

"He came for me and my men," Rllan said, unsurprised.

Kirk nodded.

"How many?"

Kirk looked up at her, like she'd asked him to guess the number of dust particles in the known universe. "I don't know."

It didn't matter. It meant there had been casualties. It meant that she had been locked in a cell, hidden behind unknowing humans who had fought her battle for her.

"This should not have happened," she said.

"You think?" Kirk muttered.

Rllan looked back at him. She couldn't see his face, only the top of his head as he stared at the floor. She remembered that humans were unaccustomed to death. Even those who engaged in battle. It left them shaken to see their kind fall.

"Your comrades' deaths…" She saw Kirk tense and paused, choosing her words carefully. "…They should not have happened."

Kirk didn't move.

"But they were honorable."

" _Don't_."

Rllan stopped short, surprised for the first time since Kirk had reentered the cell.

The human captain lifted his head, and Rllan realized that, for the first time since they'd met, he was angry. He hadn't been before, not really. It had been obvious: he had been frustrated by the circumstances, by her lack of cooperation, but now...

Rllan knew anger. She understood it. It was a physical thing, a sensation that burned behind the eyes and high in the chest. Fire smoke in the body. She could see it in Kirk's glare.

When he spoke next, his words were behind his teeth, spat at her from across the cell. "Just don't. You and your people might believe that when you die, you—ascend to the halls of your ancestors, Valhalla, whatever—that you get to—to feast and rejoice in your victories for all eternity, but you know what? _I don't believe that_. I think when you die, that's it. You're gone, your body rots away, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, so don't you sit there and try to lecture me about _honor_."

So she was to be lectured instead? Rllan's eyes narrowed as she gritted out an answer. "I understand death is different for humans—"

Before she could finish, Kirk was on his feet, shouting: " _No you don't, you are missing the fucking point!"_ He pointed at her chest, furious. Placing blame. "People died today, and their families will never see them again, and no amount of _honor_ is going to bring them back! You want to be helpful? There's one thing you can do, and it's what you should've done the moment you landed next to Federation research encampment—"

 _Enough._

Rllan stepped forward and bellowed back a response: " _153.02219, 261.84331, 0.000611."_

" _What?!_ "

Anger and fire smoke both blinded too. Rllan repeated herself.

"153.02219. 261.84331. 0.000611."

Kirk stared at for a moment, breathing hard, before he understood. She saw the change in his eyes. It deflated him, and left silence a ringing in their ears.

"Why now?" he asked finally, hoarse from shouting. "Why should I believe you? You've lied at just about every turn."

It was true. The deceptions had been necessary, had served her purposes—at least, until now. It was time to give Starfleet what they wanted, and leave the humans to their side of the Neutral Zone.

She looked at Kirk again, and told him the truth:

"Because it is time for me to fight."

* * *

"It's my duty to inform you that one of your fellow officers has been killed."

Spock had known the _Helena_ had been engaged in battle, had felt the clear reverberations of weapons fire shake the vessel. He knew the ship had escaped at warp, and had likely reemerged from the warp stream approximately fifty-six light-years from the skirmish. He had calculated the likelihood of shipboard casualties—a low, but nonetheless nonzero percentage—and had dismissed a perverse comfort that the brig was likely the most secure location on the ship for himself and the rest of the _Enterprise_ crew.

Therefore, when Captain Bridgette Mambaso sat across from him—in the same sparse meeting room where he'd been questioned before—and uttered that sentence, Spock felt something inside him shift on its axis.

 _Please._

The word floated into his mind, buoyed by surprise, and by something else he dared not name. He heard his own voice, outside his body: "Who?"

"Ensign Pavel Chekov," Mambaso said.

Relief. Then, almost immediately, shame. Then an indescribable heaviness, deep in his gut.

"I see," Spock said. "How did it happen?"

"He, Captain Kirk, and Lieutenant Commander Scott were all out of the brig at the time of the attack. I was speaking with Captain Kirk; my XO was with Mr. Scott and Mr. Chekov. We learned the _Beichen_ had sustained critical damage to its warp core and transporter. Mr. Scott volunteered to travel to the _Beichen_ by shuttle to make repairs. Captain Kirk and Mr. Chekov volunteered to go with him." Mambaso paused, her eyes flicking briefly to the table, and then back up. "They were successful," she said. "Because of their efforts, the crew of the _Beichen_ were able to evacuate with minimal loss of life."

Of course. _The needs of the many._

The thought did not assuage the weight in his side.

Mambaso met his eyes. "I grieve with thee, Commander."

Spock nodded. "Thank you." He paused, because the captain of the _Helena_ had not yet moved, nor spoken. "Why have you asked to speak with me, Captain?"

Mambaso had been leaning across the table. She drew herself upright, watching him for a reaction. "Because I have a decision to make. And I believe you can help me make it."

Spock kept silent and waited.

"Why did you agree to this mission Kirk has you on?"

Mambaso's was the same purpose as Commander DiElsi's then. Slight disappointment tugged at him. Spock broke eye contact and looked past Mambaso to the wall. "Section One of the Code of the Judge Advocate General stipulates that prisoners held aboard a Starfleet vessel are entitled to legal counsel before engaging in a legal interrog—"

Mambaso spoke over him. "Clearly you know Fleet protocol inside and out. You understand the consequences of your actions. Why do it, then? What was so important that you had to drop all the rules, and travel into the Neutral Zone to spring a group of prisoners from a Klingon labor camp?"

Spock looked back at the captain. She had pinned him with a hard stare. She reminded him, in a way, of Admiral Pike. Pike's manner as a captain had been different. He'd been willing to show his hand, to let Spock know when he was angry or frustrated. Mambaso was more…impassive. Still, he could hear the slight, barely-noticeable tightness in her voice. She was waiting for an answer—the truth. Spock knew he wouldn't be leaving this room until he gave one.

In lieu of the procedural response, he gave her the logical one: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. We were given a means to locate the missing ships, to end a potential threat to the rest of the galaxy. If risking court martial is the price we must pay in exchange, then so be it."

"You mean Rllan offered you the coordinates in exchange for her crew."

"That is correct."

"And yet, she still hasn't handed them over."

Spock hesitated for a moment. "Her agenda has proven more complex than we anticipated."

"Do you believe she has the coordinates?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. Surely Mambaso already had heard the most compelling reasons from Jim. He spelled them out anyways: "Because in her initial interactions with Captain Kirk, she revealed knowledge of the last known transmissions from the _Eratosthenes_. Information she could not possibly have had otherwise."

"And you know this because Kirk told you."

"That is correct."

Mambaso sat back in her chair and studied him for a moment. "Do you trust Captain Kirk's judgment?" she asked.

"Yes." Spock's answer was immediate.

"Why?"

Spock hesitated again. "…He has an unparalleled tactical mind, and a deep understanding of individual motivation. He is committed to justice and the preservation of life. He would not lead his crew into danger lightly."

Mambaso lifted a hand, in a sort of half-shrug. "You're captives, on the edge of Federation space. Most likely, your careers in Starfleet are over. One of your crewmembers has died." She tilted her head, watching him. "…Your captain is young. He's taken a major loss these last few months."

Spock knew it was likely Mambaso had no knowledge of the warp core. She was likely referring to the damage done to the _Enterprise_ , the loss of Admiral Pike. Still, the image of Jim's blank, mottled face through the glass of the radiation containment door flashed across his memory.

Mambaso continued: "It's hard for anyone in command to be grounded unexpectedly like that. Now, Kirk may be everything you say he is, but we all make mistakes. As they say, he's only human."

Spock felt his eyebrow twitch. When he answered his tone was one of restraint, the syllables clipped. "It is not in Jim Kirk's nature to lie to seek personal gain."

Mambaso was silent.

For a moment, Spock wondered if he'd gone too far, if he was now verging on insubordination: one more item to be added to the list of his transgressions. But then the captain's gaze softened.

"You're very loyal, Mr. Spock," she said.

"It is not without reason, Captain Mambaso," he answered. The room was quiet a moment more, and Spock sensed the conversation had come to its natural end. "…If you have any further questions regarding the charges against me and my fellow crewmembers, I must insist on my right to legal counsel."

"Of course." Mambaso stood, regarding him, and Spock mirrored her, paying due respect to rank. "Thank you."

The door to the meeting room whirred shut behind her, and Spock was left standing alone before the conference table. Only then did he remember what she'd said:

 _I have a decision to make. And I believe you can help me make it._

It was illogical to hope she'd made the right one. And yet.

* * *

"Kirk is telling the truth."

Bridgette's steps carried her down the corridor, but not in the direction of the bridge. DiElsi followed, trotting to keep up.

"What?" he demanded. "What did Spock _say_ to you?" Then, after a beat: "What did you say to _him_?"

"You know Spock's record, and his faith in Kirk is unwavering. Kirk can get to Rllan, and Rllan can get to the _Eratosthenes_."

"How can you possibly be sure of that?"

"I pissed him off." Bridgette stopped moving. They were standing at the entrance of the brig.

DiElsi opened his mouth, then closed it again, like an exasperated fish. "Captain, with all due respect—"

"I know one thing for sure. As long as the Klingons are on board, this crew and anyone nearby is at risk, and that warbird is most likely still looking for us."

"So—" DiElsi huffed. "—we can't handle another fight, we can't go home, we can't stay here. What exactly do you propose we do?"

A pair of crewmen passed then in the hall, a Medbay orderly and a flight deck hand: both saluted as they passed. Mambaso waited for them to reach the end of the hall, conscious of DiElsi's incredulous stare.

"Captain?"

"Do you trust my judgment, Matt?"

DiElsi stared at her for a moment, trying to parse her expression. Finally, he gave a slow nod. "Implicitly."

Good.

Bridgette nodded. "Then I need your help."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

 _Three hours earlier:_

 _Transporter Room,_ _USS_ Beichen

The blast was mostly flash and light, but it knocked Pavel Chekov off his feet. He landed on his back on the transport pad where the rest of the ceiling had started to cave in. Part of it was gone—sucked away by the same beam that had picked up the Captain and Mr. Scott. To his left, he heard an electric crackle and looked up in time to see the transporter console catch fire, gray smoke belching upward toward the ceiling. He scrambled to his feet and ran.

The _Beichen_ 's Engineering bay was smaller than that of the _Enterprise_ but just as mazelike, and by the time Chekov had made it to the main upper decks his eyes were stinging, his lungs searing and parched. The path before him was cloudy with smoke and strewn with debris.

He looked wildly around for a way out. There were only two options: back the way he'd come, or forward through the passage.

 _Stuck_.

To his right, a wall compartment had spilled open, revealing a rack of ancient, white exosuits, designed for external maintenance—something he could use to protect himself from the flames. He scrambled into one, and started through the smoke-filled corridor.

" _Helena_!" he shouted, flipping open his comm in one thick-gloved hand.

A man's voice answered. He recognized it as First Officer DiElsi's: " _Who is this?_ "

" _Ensign Pavel Chekov!"_

" _Mr. Chekov, what is your location on the_ Beichen _?_ "

Chekov recoiled as a cable swung down in front of him, sparking and twisting. He dodged around it and kept running. The glass viewscreen of his helmet was stained a filmy brown by the smoke, but he could see a set of doors to his left, beside them a snatch of letters and a silver caduceus.

"I'm near the Medical Bay but I'm heading to the bridge," he shouted back, "There's too much interference—"

Chekov never got to finish his sentence.

There was a sound like a cannon, and the ship lurched like a wounded beast. He was thrown hard into the wall. He could hear DiElsi's voice, tinny and distant—" _Mr. Chekov? Mr. Chekov, come in!"_ —but the comm was gone.

He tried to stand, but the floor was tipping upward in front of him. From behind him came a shriek of tearing metal, and then smoke and flame were rushing past him, and it was impossible to see. He was lifted off his feet like a rag doll, his pounding heart leaping into his throat—

—and then there was no sound at all.

Upside-down and floating, Chekov could see the gaping hole the explosion had torn in the _Beichen_ 's hull. Then something blunt and heavy slammed into him and he was spinning head over heels, the light of the stars and phaser fire blurring together. Some part of him had the sense to tuck in his limbs as he flew, to make himself as small as possible while he fumbled for something to grab onto. In his periphery he saw a length of threaded tubing fluttering this way and that. He reached out a hand and grabbed it.

The rest of his body kept going and he was snapped out of his tight ball like a flag. Something wrenched in his shoulder but he held on, grabbing at the tube with his other hand and wrapping it tight around his elbow. He could see now he was attached to a chunk of the hull—a shield—and his momentum was carrying it with him away from the battle. He pulled himself closer to it, hooking his feet around the corners, and tried to get his bearings, searching for white Federation saucers and nacelles.

Then came the second explosion, and the _Beichen_ was a cloud of fire and shrapnel.

* * *

Chekov opened his eyes.

His vision was blurry for a moment, but then he focused on the inside of his faceplate: it had been fogged by his breath. His forehead was pressed hard against the reinforced glass, which was pressed against the chunk of hull he'd used as a shield. He was curled in on himself. He relaxed each muscle experimentally. There was a dull pain stretching across his left ribs, that flared when he twisted from side to side. From shoulder to shoulder the muscles in his upper back were tight, almost numb. His right arm ached.

He was no longer moving.

He looked down first. Between the curved line of the shield, and the puffy fabric of the repair suit, he saw not stars, but rock. His feet were floating above a gray, craggy, dimpled surface: the shield had wedged itself into it centimeters below his feet. Distantly he remembered an impact. The ship had been at the edge of an asteroid belt. He must have landed on one.

He glanced left and right and confirmed his theory: motionless gray rocks, stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions.

He craned his neck to look behind him, ignoring the ache in his ribs. The asteroid that had served as his landing pad was vast, perhaps three-hundred meters across.

In the distance, he could see there were more asteroids beyond the one he'd landed on. He was at the edge of the belt: the battle was ahead of him. He turned back to the shield, tightened his grip on the threaded tube and pulled himself up to peer over the top.

Before him lay a vast debris field, evidence of the battle scattered across the stars.

Pieces of torn metal and plastic, chunks of frozen fluid, artifacts too tiny to see at this distance. Here and there, shapes too amorphous to identify as part of the ship. One or two of them seemed adorned with a flash of primary color.

A ship had been destroyed: the _Beichen_. He'd felt the second explosion. When he looked down at the curved face of the shield there were pieces of shrapnel embedded in the metal of the hull. It had saved his life.

 _Another lucky scrape_.

First Nero, then Khan, now _this_.

A laugh bubbled out of his mouth—one that was more like a shriek in the confines of his space suit. It sent pain lancing through his ribs. He pressed his forehead to the edge of the shield again, shaking with relief. He was _alive_. He was dizzy with it.

He would tell Dasha, the minute he found himself back in St. Petersburg. Or wherever she was. It didn't matter, he'd tell her wherever he found her, even if she wasn't Earthside. It was nothing to hop on a shuttle compared with _flying through a battlefield in a repair suit._

This thought set him off laughing again. Of course he would tell her! And afterwards he would tell his father and mother and grandfather, and his grandfather would laugh while his mother fretted and his father offered grudging acknowledgement.

He was shaking. The pain was good: it and the laughter reinforced that he was alive, that he'd hurtled through the void and made it.

Deep in the back of his mind, there was a part of him that knew he wasn't thinking clearly, and it pulled to the surface. He would have his triumphant return, but there were practical matters to address first. In order to get back to Earth, he first had to get back to a ship. He had to get back to the _Helena_.

He took a few deep breaths, then pulled himself back up to scan the stars, to find the logistical end of his deliverance.

He scanned left and right, up and down. But there was no _Helena_.

A brief seed of doubt implanted itself in his stomach— _what if the_ Helena _was destroyed too?_ But he dismissed it immediately: there wasn't enough debris to constitute that of two ships. And the Klingon warbird appeared to be missing as well.

The rational part of him knew his mind might be playing tricks on him—he'd just been in a battle, he might have hit his head—but he didn't know how exactly. It couldn't have been long; the ships had to be there, nearby. He shook his head and looked again, but still: nothing.

Chekov remembered abruptly the repair suit had an embedded communicator on his right upper arm. His right arm was still wrapped in the threaded tube; with his left he let go of the shield and pressed the comm to activate it.

"Chekov to _Helena_ ," he said.

Static.

He hit it again. "Ensign Chekov to _Helena_ , can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Something fluttered in his chest—a dizziness markedly different from the giddy relief he'd felt only moments before.

He pressed the communicator again and again.

"Chekov to _Helena_ , I am stranded on an asteroid on the far side of the debris field, can you hear me? _Helena_ come in."

"Chekov to _Helena_ , please come in, I'm alive but I'm stuck and I—"

"Chekov to _Helena_ , _I need help—anyone—_ "

Something caught his eye on the other side of the debris field: twin lines in the black. Blue, spectral, and rapidly dissolving. Warp contrails.

They were gone.

His hand dropped from his wrist. The built-in comm had no real range, he knew that. It was a simple repair suit, intended to stay close to its vessel, and not built for long-range subspace communication, much less hailing ships at warp.

Chekov realized he was breathing too hard and much too quickly, and it struck him with another wave of terror that he was using up his oxygen supply—but he couldn't stop.

He'd seen and done things your average nineteen-year-old couldn't even dream of. He'd beamed Kirk and Sulu right out of the sky on Vulcan, taken over Engineering in Mr. Scott's absence, caught Kirk and Mr. Scott before they'd fallen to their deaths as the _Enterprise_ plummeted toward Earth, and flipped the switch that had allowed her to fly again. But now, clinging to a length of tube off the edge of the Klingon freighter, Chekov knew that all of that had been nothing but standing on the shoulders of giants like the Captain and Mr. Spock and Mr. Scott, and also Sulu and Doctor McCoy and Lieutenant Uhura. All of it had been done with equipment and proper communications and other people who knew what they were doing, and his father had been so, so right, he _was_ still just a boy, he _did_ still need someone to tell him what to do, to tell him how to get out of this. His breath was coming in short gasps and his limbs were shaking, and he hadn't felt this lost, this paralyzed, in a well over a year, not since—

Something _pinged_ off the side of Chekov's helmet. He screamed: an aborted cry that dissolved immediately into a sob. Then his ears were ringing, and when that faded all was silent but for the ragged, terrified gulps of air he was taking in, amplified tenfold by the spacesuit.

He turned, shaking, toward the source of whatever had hit him. There was nothing but the rest of the asteroid belt. He was alone. Beyond his shield was nothing but twisted metal and the floating debris field.

Then something _flickered_.

It made his breath catch in his throat.

Before him, about five meters away, there had been a shimmer of motion. Almost like a mirage.

His arms still trembled, he still felt lightheaded—but there was something else there too. Something that compelled him to lean forward, to look closely. His curiosity was rewarded: the _something_ —whatever it was—flickered again.

He breathed in. Out. In.

Very, very tentatively, Chekov turned back to the shield. He placed both feet on the plastic and pushed, rocking back and forth, testing its strength. It didn't budge.

He looked back to his right, leaned forward again.

Something else was definitely there. Something that decidedly wasn't rock.

Right.

Chekov hooked his feet around the sides of the shield again, gripping the top with his left hand. Slowly, he unwound his right arm from the threaded tube. Once free, he wrapped it around his waist, tying a crude bowline knot, pushing past the discomfort. He tugged on it, then repeated the test.

He looked to his right, tested the security of his anchor once more, then pushed off the shield.

There wasn't much tubing left—only about ten meters. He was jerked back at the waist before he could reach the shimmering object in front of him—but not before he understood what it was.

It took shape before his eyes. It was chromed, metallic, much too large to be a torn piece of hull from the _Beichen_.

Ahead of him was a thick handle leading to an exterior ladder, just out of his reach. He followed it with his eyes, and it led him to the metal seam of a door.

 _An airlock_.

Chekov looked down the length of the shape and identified its limits: top and bottom, bow and stern. He was faced with its starboard side. There were words stenciled into the hull, and they shimmered slowly into view:

 _Eratosthenes._

Chekov's heart began to pound. For a moment, he forgot where he was: tethered to a piece of debris from a destroyed ship, alone on the edge of Federation space. Then he remembered, and the panic flared up again. This time, he forced himself to take a breath.

No one was here to help him now. Not the Captain, not Mr. Scott, not his grandfather or Hikaru or anyone else. And if he didn't figure something out, he wasn't going to see any of them ever again.

 _You'll be fine, Pavel. You're a Starfleet officer, remember?_

Dasha. He pictured her sad, pitying smile, remembered the feeling of her fingers on his palms, her lips on his cheek. And he fixated on four words:

 _You're a Starfleet officer_.

It took effort, but he took in another breath, and let it out as slowly as he could. Then he did it again, and again.

When he spoke, he spoke in Russian. He needed to be able to think without translating. " _Ok_ ," he said. " _I need two things. I need a source of oxygen to replace the spacesuit tank when it runs out. I need a long-range communication device, so I can locate the_ Helena _and send out a distress signal."_

He took another deep breath. Then:

" _I can do that._ "

* * *

 _He's lying in bed, on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling._

 _Directly above him is a star chart of the Milky Way. Around it, the model starships he made last year and the year before out of glue and replicated plastic, painstakingly assembled and strung tenuously overhead. One of them needs repairs; the port nacelle is coming apart. He's thirteen, his birthday is in ten days, and he's just been accepted to Starfleet Academy._

 _Downstairs, his parents have gotten into a raging argument: their third in as many weeks. His father's position is the same as it's been all year, throughout the application process, throughout the extra audits because of his age, throughout the extra lessons to bring his Standard up to scratch. He's too young, barely a teenager. How can he possibly find a place among fully-grown adults jump-starting their careers? Who would take him seriously? His mother has more faith. There isn't just one path for everyone; he can follow his own. Besides, he never really fit in with any of his schoolmates._

 _His door is hanging half-open, but he can't bring himself to get up and shut it. He's paralyzed, unable to tear himself away, to put in his headphones or turn on the radio, unable to stop himself from listening._

 _A knock on the half-open door: his grandfather._

 _Pavel doesn't say anything, just props himself up on his elbows and waits. Arkady pushes the door all the way open and tosses Pavel his sneakers. They land with a gentle thump on the oval rug. "Let's go for a walk."_

 _T_ _hey go to the park._

 _June in St. Petersburg is kind when it isn't raining. Outside it's a little humid and a little cloudy, but cool in the shade. Arkady leans lightly on Pavel's arm as they walk. Pavel, who never walks when he can run, thinks in the back of his mind that he should be annoyed at how slowly they're moving along the park path—but he isn't. He's surprised by how relieved he feels to be out in the fresh air, how the pressure in his chest seems to have lifted, if only by degrees._

 _"Pavel," his grandfather says, "There is something you need to know."_

 _Pavel looks up at him._

" _In August you will be at Starfleet," Arkady continues. When Pavel looks at him quizzically, Arkady gives him a low, somewhat bitter rumble of a laugh. "Despite what your father may think. You'll be there. Count on it."_

 _Pavel swallows. There's an inescapable urge to play devil's advocate, to make his grandfather prove his point. "He doesn't think I can be there on my own."_

" _You won't be. There are people at the Academy who will take care of you. I've made sure of it."_

" _How?"_

" _I have a few friends in San Francisco," his grandfather answers vaguely. "That's beside the point. I have something important to tell you."_

 _Arkady guides them over to a bench and sits heavily._

" _What?"_

" _Someday, a day will come when you are truly on your own. You will have to make decisions to ensure your own survival. There will be no one else to help you, or tell you what to do."_

 _Pavel smiles, bemused. His grandfather has always had a flare for the dramatic._

 _Arkady arches a bushy eyebrow. "This is serious, boy."_

 _Pavel quashes his smile. "Yes. Sorry, grandpa."_

" _Sit."_

 _His legs are long enough that his feet touch the ground, but he kicks his feet anyways, gripping the edges of the still slightly damp wood._

" _When that day comes, Pavel, you will have to take care of yourself. When it does, you must know that you can do it. Do you understand?" Arkady leans in, looks him in the eye. They're almost nose-to-nose. "You must know that you are capable."_

* * *

It terrified him to do it. His suit had a chronometer built into the arm, and it took him the better part of an hour to work up to it, alternately staring at the shimmering form floating only meters away from him, with only the sound of his breath for company, and furiously brainstorming workaround after workaround.

To no avail. None of them were feasible: the threaded tube wasn't long enough for him to reach the ship, and he had no effective way of cutting it.

The thing that scared him into action was the sight of the oxygen meter on his upper arm, between the comm unit and the chronometer, the red pressure needle hovering at eighty percent.

With shaking fingers, he united the bowline, easing the pressure on his aching ribs. He let go of the tube and it drifted in different directions with the micro-pressure from his hands, like a sea snake unfurling underwater. He hesitated for a moment, clinging to the edges of the shield, half-convinced a breeze or a piece of debris would come flying out of nowhere and send him spinning into the black.

He gripped the edges of the shield, his knuckles tight in the heavy gloves of the repair suit. He aimed.

 _Just do it, Pavel, just do it,_ just do it _, just—_

His hands were extended in front of him. He didn't remember pushing off: all that was there was him and the void. He stretched out like a diver plunging into a swimming pool, compensating for nonexistent drag, his vision focused down to a single, distorted point—

The metal ladder shimmered into view and his hands closed tight around one of the rungs. The rest of his body followed, knees and elbows knocking into the hull with unexpected force. A gasp whooshed out of him, half from the pain of impact, half from relief.

He looked behind him. The piece of threaded tube was still unfolding gently, just where he'd left it.

So far so good.

* * *

 _Dasha's ponytail—light, wispy, frizzy—is haloed from behind her by the late afternoon sun. Her hand is halfway cupped around a mostly finished glass of carbonated water, the fizz gone flat, condensation dripping down the sides. They're seated at an expensive, vaguely touristy café at one corner of Red Square. Not exactly their first choice for cold drinks, but an overhang is an overhang, and they've exhausted themselves wandering around in the heat._

 _Pavel sees the rain before he hears it: a light sprinkling, then a few surprised exclamations from the crowd of tourists ahead of them in the square. A sun shower. Not heavy enough to drive everyone indoors, but not light enough to pass unnoticed either._

 _Dasha watches the reactions of the crowd. Some wander calmly toward shelter, others duck under bags and purses and jackets. A lone few draw umbrellas out of pockets and totes. Her fingers tap in a rolling pattern on the edge of the wrought iron café chair she's sitting in. Pavel can just see the edge of her smile. After a moment the idea comes to him. He reaches out, taps her tan shoulder, and she turns._

 _Pavel points across the square. "Let's race."_

 _Dasha raises an eyebrow. "Seriously?" Sometimes she looks at him like that—like she can't quite believe he exists, like there should be anyone like him in the world. A hefty dose of skepticism, tempered by that small, disbelieving smile. Nobody has ever looked at him like that before. With the sun behind her, she glows._

 _He nods, already pushing back his chair._

 _Dasha darts another glance out at the crowd before pushing her chair back as well. "No running," she says, grinning now. "You have a natural advantage."_

 _"Fair enough." Pavel shrugs. He gets no reply after that, and no warning—just a flash of Dasha's grin before she dives forward into the crowd, legs pumping as fast as she can push them without breaking into a sprint._

 _Pavel leaps over the rope separating the outdoor seating from the square and throws himself after her._

* * *

He needn't have worried about getting in. He needn't have hoped, either. The other side of the _Eratosthenes_ was torn open, the metal twisted back like a partially-peeled orange. Some huge piece of debris had knocked into the ship and hit a seam in the metal.

Chekov could reconstruct the chaos in his head: the groaning creak of objects rending that were supposed to be unbreakable. Then the violence of oxygen rushing out into the black, throwing equipment and bodies around like driftwood in ocean surf.

At least these bodies had already been dead, Chekov had thought, peering in on the damaged bridge from outside, perched on the external ladder.

Confident enough the ship wouldn't float away with him in it, Chekov pulled himself inside. Miraculously, a number of bodies were still there. All of them had uniforms. At least, half of one: a red-gray jacket, all bearing the symbol of the UPF Academy of Sciences.

A few of them were in odd places and at odd angles—likely thrown into the wall. One, a young man, his olive face dark with stubble, floated with his eyes still open, eerily blank, frozen in place. Chekov tried not to look at him.

There were objects scattered around the room, too: datapads, styluses, hologram projectors. Suspended near the dead-eyed man, a glossy, old-fashioned telescope.

He called out experimentally to the computer, and received no answer. He tested the control panel. It was fried. Nothing worked. The comms, autonav—even the auxiliary systems. The impact of whatever had torn up the ship had damaged the electronics, too: the guts of the vessel had been exposed to the elements in a way they were never supposed to be.

He picked his way through the ship. Off the bridge and leading away from the cockpit was a wide corridor, running through the center of the vessel. He moved slowly through it, pushing off the walls in a slow zigzag that felt inappropriate for the circumstances. A few meters along he came across a massive map of the galaxy, engraved in the wall: a star chart.

Chekov remembered this was a ship of stellar cartographers. He had an identical map on his ceiling at home, on a ratty poster he'd bought at a flea market. Before Starfleet had become a real possibility in his life, he'd always planned on a career mapping the stars. This—the useless equipment, the empty ship, the frozen, blank-eyed crewmembers—could have been him. He pushed away the thought.

Further along, the crew cabin. He passed a bunk that was mysteriously, miraculously, still untouched. The lights were off inside, but he could make out a pair of figures entwined in the lower bunk, hovering a few inches over the bedsheets. They must have spent their last hours here, together. One of the figures' long hair had fanned out behind them, obscuring both their faces. A curtain of privacy.

Chekov stared, mesmerized, for a few minutes at the tendrils of hair before it occurred to him that the virus could still be active inside the room. Unsettled, he moved on, and didn't open the door.

Short a long-range comm system, his second thought was to find the ship's reserve oxygen supply. A long and fruitless search led him to the lower decks, to the auxiliary control room. He wasn't able to get inside, only to look in through a flat, narrow window in the door. Another pair of bodies were floating inside, surrounded by canisters and canisters—all empty—for reserve oxygen. Why had they moved all of them there? Had they been infected later than the others? Had they panicked and barricaded themselves inside, then tried to flush the room clean?

That was the closest he could come to an explanation. He didn't like the idea of what they might have had to do to get themselves alone in there. He turned away, back to the long corridor that led through the rest of the ship.

Exploring the vessel, his focus had manifested itself as a numbness, a morbid, clinical curiosity. Now he could feel the anxiety, the reality of the situation creeping back into his gut. He steeled himself with a breath and pushed his way back to the bridge. He moved around the enormous holo-table in the center of the room, slipping past objects and the former crew as if they weren't dead—as if they were frozen in time and he was some kind of ghost. Or—somehow—his reality was merely sped up a million times faster, and he was watching a normal day's work play out in hyper-slow motion. The oxygen meter on his arm beeped loudly, making him jump. The needle was at 75%.

 _Come on, Pavel,_ think.

When the answer came to him, he felt a flush of embarrassment at how long it had taken him to get there. He cursed, pressing his gloved palm to his faceplate, then pushing himself over the holo-table to where the telescope was floating. He passed before the dead-eyed man and nodded at him in acknowledgement, then picked up the telescope. Floating on the bridge of a ghost-ship or not, it was a beautiful piece of equipment. Chekov imagined—whether or not this was actually true—that it had belonged to the man.

He positioned himself where he could look through the hole in the hull and focused the lens, peering into the black. Dead port there was nothing. But there in the distance, a little to his right, he saw it: a shimmer in the rocky landscape, a mirage distorting the stars.

* * *

" _And_ that _is why ye don't put a lifeform in an NX-class transport system unless you're willing to risk scrambling some guts." Mr. Scott stabs a finger at the console screen._

 _Chekov studies the simulation, with its comically poor animation. The crewmembers are marked by their uniform color and rank, but their faces are the simplest of cartoons, maybe to make the "blood splatter"—fuzzy blocks of red positioned next to limbs and abdomens—less threatening to the learner. Chekov is more than a little bit amused. He's hard pressed to imagine a situation in which he'd be transporting life forms to or from an NX-class vessel. Still, he bites his tongue. Mr. Scott seems to take it seriously enough, and Chekov has too much respect for the Chief Engineer to show his skepticism._

 _He's been shadowing Mr. Scott for three months now. Fleet scuttlebutt might have it that Captain Kirk is an irresponsible thrill-seeker, but anyone actually working on the_ Enterprise _knows otherwise. The crew is a young one, nearly half the officers battlefield promotions after the Battle of Vulcan. And since basic skill redundancy is one of the most important aspects of shipboard life, the captain has assigned nearly every crewmember independent study tasks to bring the ship up to scratch._

 _It's nearly the end of beta shift, approaching dinner time. They've been going over the perils of NX-class transport systems for almost two hours. Chekov's stomach growls, louder than he'd like, given the circumstances. From over his shoulder, Mr. Scott chuckles._

 _"All right lad, that's enough for tonight. Go get yourself fed."_

" _Are you sure, sir?" Chekov asks, turning in his seat, trying not to betray his relief._

 _Mr. Scott is already shutting down the simulation from the adjacent console. "Aye, a'course. We can take another look at this next week."_

 _"We aren't meeting tomorrow?"_

 _"No, got too much to do. Got a planetary survey comin' up in two weeks' time—some backwater little planet called Nibiru. Should be fairly routine, but there's a heap of recalibrating to do on the shuttles beforehand. In any case, it can keep 'till after Remembrance Day."_

 _Something inside Chekov freezes. It's instantaneous, like someone has flipped a switch in his brain. The strangest thing is that he's aware of the change—like some part of himself is watching the rest—the part that's reacting—from high above, holding a clipboard and taking note of what happens._

 _He realizes in that moment how adept he's become at keeping the thought out of his mind: the vision of Mr. Spock standing on the transporter pad, scratched and bruised and covered in dirt, his hand outstretched, his face stricken. Surrounded by the handful of Vulcan elders, staring numbly at the open display of emotion before them._

 _In the wake of Nero's attack, the battlefield promotions, his suddenly permanent status as navigator of the_ Enterprise _, it became clear that Pavel wasn't going to be able to avoid the taciturn Commander. And so, over the last year, he's edited the memory so well out of his daily existence that it's snuck up on him. 2258.42 is in two days. There's no avoiding it now._

I lost…I lost her.

" _Laddie? You all right?"_

 _The data entry box is gone from the console before him; it's empty and ready for use again. He's been staring blankly at it, and now there's a lump forming fast in his throat, too fast for him to hide—_

" _Chekov?" asks Mr. Scott._

 _His eyes are running over. Chekov runs his sleeve over them and feels his breath hitch as he tries to calm himself down._

" _Whoa, whoa, hold on there. What happened? What's wrong?"_

" _It's—nothing. I'm fine, it's nothing."_

" _It bloody well is not."_

 _There's the scratch of plastic wheels on the floor as Mr. Scott pulls out the chair at the console next to him. "Was it the simulation, lad? Forget about that, that system's bloody ancient! I'd be surprised if you didn't have any casualties."_

 _There's a hand on his shoulder now, an attempt at comfort. But Mr. Scott is wrong, it isn't the simulation. His kindness is misplaced._

 _Chekov feels his throat tighten at that thought, feels a flash of guilt and panic for what's happening now, in the present, on top of his failings of the past._

 _Mr. Scott doesn't move, just keeps babbling, half-confused, about the simulation and how it doesn't really matter. Chekov can feel the urge flee prickling on his scalp. He needs to go where it's safe, where he doesn't have to face any of this. But he can't move. He's frozen, weighed down by the engineer's compassion._

" _I forgot about it!" he blurts out, finally._

 _This puts a halt to Mr. Scott's sermon about the inherent faultiness of NX-class transporters._

 _Chekov draws a shaky breath, trying to regain his composure, only to let out another quiet sob._ Useless.

" _Which part, lad?" the engineer asks, tentatively. Asking about the simulation. Then—"No, it doesn't matter. We can go over it on Monday; you can clear your head over the weekend—"_

" _I forgot about Remembrance Day. I f-forgot about Spock's mother."_

 _This time, Mr. Scott falls silent._

 _But for Chekov, it's as if he's broken through a dam. "I couldn't help her," he gasps, "at the transporter, I couldn't help her."_

Don't move, _he'd said._

Stay right where you are, _he'd said._

 _The tears are flowing harder now, and he's hiccupping every other word. "I could help the Captain and Mr. Sulu but I couldn't help her, and if I'd been better, if I'd_ done _better she'd be alive—"_

"Stop that."

 _Mr. Scott has been aboard the_ Enterprise _for almost a year now, and Chekov has heard him exasperated, sarcastic, even tipsy. But never stern. He finds himself silenced, unable to meet the engineer's eyes._

" _You listen to me," Mr. Scott says firmly. "There was nothing you could do."_

 _No. This isn't what he wants to hear. Chekov starts to shake his head, but Mr. Scott interrupts him again. "Stop it. Ye can't think like that."_

" _I do think like that."_

" _Well, you've got to stop. You did the best you could and that's all that counts. D'ye understand?"_

 _He doesn't._

" _It wasn't your fault, lad. All right? It was that madman's fault. I want ye to say it. It wasn't your fault."_

 _The tears have slowed to a trickle, and Chekov feels himself growing tired. He can feel his resistance weakening. He isn't getting out of this. "It wasn't…" he trails off, swallows._

" _It wasn't your fault," Mr. Scott prompts._

" _It wasn't m-my fault."_

 _The engineer pats his arm. Chekov looks up, and Mr. Scott gives him a kind, sad smile._

" _You've got to save yourself now, lad."_

* * *

In hindsight, Chekov would think hours later, the irony was that it was all easy. The _Eratosthenes'_ computer might have been fried, but its emergency maintenance hardware wasn't. On one of the lower decks he had no trouble locating a harness large enough to fit over his repair suit, and, under a wall panel in the central corridor, a cable that could have wrapped itself around the ship ten times over. It wasn't particularly hard to secure the cable to the harness and make his way back to the hole ripped in the _Eratosthenes_. Nor was it difficult, after the jump from his debris-shield, to push himself out into the black.

He soon established a rhythm, pulling himself gingerly along the surface of the asteroids, moving as quickly as he could without straining his ribs. It wasn't long before the freighter shimmered into view. The vessel was a dull, grayish green: a large metal box the size of a commercial transit shuttle, nothing like the elegant and lethal birds of prey that engaged Federation starships. The red, tripartite insignia of the Klingon Empire was slashed through: there were deep scratches in the metal, all over the aft and starboard sides. At first glance Chekov worried the hull might be compromised like that of the _Eratosthenes_ , but upon closer inspection it became clear they were old scars, remnants of some other violent encounter.

He spent only a few minutes examining the exterior of the ship. It was easy to locate the airlock, to determine the tools he needed to let himself in. To return to the broken _Eratosthenes_ and retrieve the tools he needed. To activate the freighter's external console and begin the process of breaking his way in.

Now that he'd found his solution, all of the steps to achieve it were within his skill set. It didn't take ingenuity.

What it took was time.

He didn't notice until he was almost in—until light headed giddiness had turned to light headed terror at the sight of the diminishing oxygen needle on his arm, hovering at two percent. It was then that Chekov remembered he wasn't yet done—that he needed not only to get into the ship but to find the Klingons' spare oxygen supply, if it even existed, and connect it to his own.

And yet now that he'd seen the needle he could feel the panic rising in his chest, could feel the weight of each breath, could feel his mind growing sluggish.

Even as the airlock hatch opened before him. Even as he disentangled himself from, frantic now, from the makeshift harness. As the hatch sealed shut behind him and he felt the pull of artificial gravity heavier than his own. After hours spent floating in zero-G, the repair suit felt like an iron cage, dragging him down.

There were bodies around him, in the main cabin and in the cargo hold. One was slumped over a seat in the cockpit. He'd known they would be there but he hadn't thought about what that would mean. And unlike the crew of the Eratosthenes, they weren't preserved by the cold, airless vacuum.

He didn't have time to dwell on it. He stumbled into the next room over: the cargo hold. There were bodies here too.

One percent.

There wasn't any time.

Chekov wasn't thinking about the fact that he was in a room full of infected corpses. He wasn't thinking about the fact that in a matter of hours he would be weak and feverish, that in a matter of days he would be blind and delusional, that inside of two weeks he would be dead.

There were no noble, worldly considerations to comfort him either. No _at least I can help Starfleet recover the ships,_ no _at least I'll be remembered for something important,_ no _at least there's a chance they'll find me, and I'll be buried on Earth._

He was on his knees now, in front of a trio of corpses crowded into the corner: an adult and two children, one under each arm. The children's faces were hidden. The adult's were wide and glassy.

In hindsight, it was easy. Everything had been funneled into a ruthless pragmatism.

He fumbled open the control panel on his left arm and entered a command. There was a hiss of air at his neck. He tore off the helmet.

* * *

USS _Helena_ , the brig:

Jim stared at Rllan. It was strange: he'd spent so much time in the last twenty-four hours being strung along that he'd lost any expectations of what he would think when she finally turned over the damn coordinates. It drained him in a way he didn't anticipate.

"Why now?" he asked. His voice felt raw from shouting. "Why should I believe you?"

It might have been his imagination, but Rllan's face seemed to soften imperceptibly before she answered.

"Because it's time for me to fight."

Jim didn't have an answer to that. At least, not one that he was able to get out before he heard the sound of the force field being deactivated to his left. Captain Mambaso stood in the doorway, flanked by First Officer DiElsi. He hadn't seen them arrive.

"Let's go," Mambaso said, waving them over. "We need your help."

Jim and Rllan glanced at each other. Rllan was still tensed, as if expecting an attack.

Behind her, DiElsi crossed his arms and huffed out a sigh. "She's right," he said. "But I want it known I'm participating under protest."


End file.
